This month’s Frame: Using self-determination theory to build a more mindful internet
A framework exploring the ways friction can be introduced as a way to create more meaningful user experiences.
The dominant paradigm for digital product teams today is to create infinite, frictionless experiences. Many people have flocked towards platforms that offer features such as autofilled passwords, seamless payments, highly-engaging algorithmic feeds.
However, in recent years, the promise of seamless digital experiences has been called into question by a growing and vocal population of users. Infinite scroll, once imagined to provide a more fluid browsing experience is increasingly cited as a design pattern that can trap users into unhealthy screen dependence. “Doomscrolling,” “bed rotting” and “brain rot” are all new slang terms that all speak to people’s malaise with this fundamentally passive, perhaps mindless mode of engaging with online worlds.
What this reveals is that while seamlessness may drive user experiences, it can lead to decreased feelings of user agency in moments where agency is desirable. Certainly agency is contextual. Whilst people may reasonably want to offload the friction of tasks of password management or logging into banking apps, agency is often desirable on platforms where people are seeking to connect, discover and grow.
Against this backdrop, young people are increasingly gravitating toward social, interest and personal growth platforms that increase their agency.
Moodboarding platforms We’re seeing a resurgence among Gen Z and Gen Alpha of moodboarding apps like Pinterest and Tumblr. Newer apps such as social music platform Airbuds has recently introduced a moodboarding feature popular with Gen Z users.
Interest platforms such as Letterboxd and GoodReads have seen increased growth and popularity. With reading culture growing amongst younger generations on “booktok,” it feels relevant that TikTok does not meet all their needs for creating reading lists and monitoring progress.
Personal growth platforms such as Strava and Headspace are becoming essential scaffolds for many young people’s goals, routines and lifestyles that can also provide ways of connecting and building community online and offline.
And at the most extreme end, people have been investing in hardware solutions to digital problems—for example, switching to a “dumb phone” or a phone-locking device such as “brick”. These tools succeed because they enhance rather than replace human agency, providing structure and feedback without eliminating the user's active engagement. Users feel like they're building something—whether it's a curated aesthetic identity or an athletic capability.
Until now, mainstream social platforms have treated friction as a problem to be resolved, rather than an opportunity to unlock new forms of user value. At the same time, alternative and emergent platforms are building their value proposition around meaningful agency and friction. Taking a more nuanced understanding of agency online can help product teams build intentional friction and meet people where they’re at.
The framework
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan highlight that people have an innate tendency towards activity, but also a vulnerability to passivity. At our best, we are agentic, inspired, striving to learn and grow. But in certain conditions, we languish, eventually falling into feelings of apathy and alienation.
According to their theory of self-determination (SDT), people have three psychological needs that need to be met to flourish: autonomy (the sense that you are in control of your own behavior), competence (feeling effective and capable) and relatedness (the need to feel connected with others).
The environments that we find ourselves in can both foster and thwart these needs.
Imagine two work environments: in the first, employees can choose how to approach their projects (autonomy), receive coaching to develop new skills (competence), and collaborate with others on shared goals (relatedness). As a result, they feel intrinsically motivated and directive of their own career experience.
In the second environment, workers must follow orders rather than think for themselves, have limited experiences to learn and grow, and lack a sense of connection to their colleagues. This environment leads to apathy, alienation and eventually, burnout. Both might technically deliver business results, but the long-term sustainability of the businesses are dramatically different.
Young people's migration toward platforms that require more active curation and participation suggests there's real demand for social platforms that intentionally scaffold human agency. Amidst the rise of global fandoms, fostering intentional friction and rewarding deeper engagement is an opportunity for social platforms to cultivate deeper, lasting relationships with users.
Applying the framework
In eliminating friction, social platforms have eliminated much of what makes them meaningful to users. Instead of prioritizing seamless experiences, product teams should focus on building digital worlds that scaffold autonomy, competence and relatedness.
Autonomy: direct levels of control
Help users direct their experiences online and signal how “in control” they want to be. Platforms could give users more agency to understand, modify, and direct the algorithmic experience itself. Instagram leaned into this recently by introducing “Recommendations Reset,” giving users the ability to reset the content recommendations they see. Additional features could include giving people algorithmic lenses eg. “calm mode” or “learning mode” that could help users filter their feeds to reflect their personal goals and values.
Competence: support intentional self-exploration and growth
Empower users to develop self-knowledge through intentional spaces for personal growth and identity work. This could include sharing progress over time. For example, the running app Strava makes personal progress visible through measuring segment times, personal records and training analysis. Similarly, gaming platforms enable users to express their creativity through completing the game's challenges. This could also include giving users personal spaces where they can curate and share what is important to them eg. Letterboxd’s watchlists.
Relatedness: facilitate shared activities
This is the area where social platforms already play the most. However, even here, social platforms could be doing more. Product teams should be encouraged to think beyond tools for content sharing and push themselves to give users more things to do together. Discord is especially good at this: users can not only socialise in real-time but also cultivate interest-based communities. Among gamers (Discord’s initial target user base) these communities are commonly known as guilds, where fans can coordinate playing together, create fan art and share tips on how to improve—and over the course of many projects we have seen just how valuable users find these communities.
Designing social platforms to foster autonomy, competence, and relatedness can help us move beyond the paradigm of seamlessness and restore the processes online that genuinely support us to flourish.
Interested in exploring similar topics further? Explore our archive of past Frames for fresh perspectives:
Bernard Stiegler’s concept of “long and short circuits” can help us understand our broader fatigue with digital solutions and algorithmically-driven experiences combined with a nostalgia for IRL experiences and analog products. We explore Stiegler’s pharmacological approach to technology here.
In our piece on our evolving relationship with AI, we consider Airoldi’s typology of interaction to propose a more collaborative approach to human-algorithmic interactions that fosters more experimentation, autonomy and trust.
Many users feel they are losing control of technology. Using the theories of Langdon Winner, we propose that moving from a “blackboxed” technology-first state to a “human-first” approach can help us regain a sense of control.
NEWS
London Data Week is a city-wide festival of events and public engagement activities that focus on data for the public good, taking place this year across Monday 7 July - Sunday 13 July. As part of the festival, we are hosting an in-person event on combining data science and social science to strengthen patient voices on Thursday 10 July at our office. Sign up here to attend and check out the full programme here.
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