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Hyejin Jeon

6 updates, last on Oct 7, 2026

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Questions this week

Week 5

How is smoothness in conversational AI produced and expressed through the interface? What labor, infrastructure, and organizational decisions remain outside the user experience? How far can these hidden conditions be traced without reducing them to a simplified explanation?

Week 4

How does smoothness change when the hidden labor and material processes behind AI become visible? Can this visibility create meaningful emotional friction, or will it be quickly ignored?

Week 3

Where does friction go when a digital experience feels smooth? Can a pause or small difficulty encourage reflection? What labor, data, and resources remain invisible behind a fast result?

Week 2

I explored the following questions this week: 1. Can the same friction create an opportunity for reflection for one user while becoming an accessibility barrier for another? 2. Can friction introduced to support reflection or protect users also become another method of directing and controlling their behavior? 3. Does a seamless user experience actually eliminate friction, or does it relocate friction to other workers, places, or environments? Across these questions, I was also thinking about who controls friction, who benefits from smoothness, and how the relationship between smoothness and friction changes depending on the user and context.

Week 1

This week, I conducted broader research around Design Friction, the topic I want to pursue. In particular, I considered smoothness in digital environments not simply as a visual or functional quality, but as a system connected to time and speed, structures of choice, data collection, habitual behavior, and invisible labor. Based on this research, I asked whom seamless interfaces are designed for, whether users are truly making free choices in digital environments, and what kinds of data and labor remain hidden behind convenient experiences. I also considered whether Design Friction could create an opportunity for users to recognize these underlying structures.

Weel 6: Provotype

How can friction be treated as something other than a problem to eliminate? Can it be measured, exchanged, or practiced? Under what conditions does friction interrupt an automatic flow and lead to reflection, rather than simply producing annoyance or unnecessary difficulty? I was also interested in whether the meaning of friction changes depending on who chooses it, how much control a person has, and whether its purpose is clear.

Research discoveries

Week 5

I conducted a preliminary interface audit of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude using the same neutral text and summarization prompt. I observed recurring patterns: all three minimized the waiting process, presented completed answers without a visible speaker, and separated uncertainty from the response through general disclaimers or peripheral interface elements. The interfaces also suggested possible controls through model labels, source panels, or output settings, but it was not always clear whether these provided meaningful agency. This research helped me distinguish process visibility from user agency. Showing technical labels or a “Thinking” state does not necessarily explain the process or allow users to change it. I was also surprised by how little of the system needs to be shown for the interaction to feel immediate and complete.

Week 4

Through my research and 5 prototypes, I found that smoothness may not eliminate friction but redistribute it across human labor, data systems, infrastructure, and the environment. I also began to understand friction as a possible emotional tension that emerges after hidden processes become visible. This remains a working hypothesis that needs to be tested with others.

Week 3

Through this week’s experiments, I realized that smoothness does not necessarily eliminate friction. It can hide it or shift it to other people, systems, and environments. I was surprised by how many actions and processes I usually overlook while using digital platforms. Small interruptions also helped make these hidden structures more noticeable, suggesting that carefully designed friction can create a moment for awareness and reflection.

Week 2

Through this research, I discovered that smoothness and friction are not opposing or separate concepts. Instead, they exist in an interconnected relationship and continuously produce one another within the same system. The smoothness provided to users may not eliminate friction but relocate it to other workers, places, or environments. For example, seamless AI services depend on data-labeling labor, while curated social media feeds rely on workers who directly review harmful content. I also realized that intentionally visible friction can reveal the data collection, labor, and power relations hidden by seamless experiences. However, friction does not always increase reflection or autonomy. The same interruption may give one user time to think while creating a cognitive burden or accessibility barrier for another. What surprised me most was that the meaning of friction depends on who designs and controls it, who experiences it, and where its burden is distributed.

Week 1

Through my research, I discovered that seamless interfaces are more deeply connected than I had expected to social and economic systems that influence user behavior, collect data, and turn that data into platform operations and profit. I was particularly interested in how experiences that appear to offer users simple convenience are actually shaped by various technological structures and the economic objectives of digital platforms.

Weel 6: Provotype

This week, I created and tested 3 provotypes: - Friction Calories: reframes daily friction as something that can be measured and managed like a wellness goal. - Friction Paywall: requires users to earn Friction Credits through clicking, copying, loading, and waiting before receiving an AI-generated answer. - Brain Gym: treats friction as cognitive resistance through exercises such as attempting, recalling, and staying with a difficult thought.

Other work

Week 5

I refined my thesis framework around the proposition that smoothness may redistribute friction beyond the interface and contribute to constructing AI as a sociotechnical black box. I selected conversational AI as my primary case and organized the research through four layers: interface, hidden processes, material infrastructure, and power and responsibility. I also developed the next research step, “Attempting to Trace One Response,” which will map one AI response across these four layers and identify what is known, assumed, and unknown.

Week 4

I reviewed my previous research and prototypes and organized how my inquiry developed over the past four weeks. I also identified my current limitations and outlined my next steps: researching precedents, mapping an AI user journey, testing with others, and narrowing the scope of hidden labor.

Week 3

I made and documented five rapid prototypes: a question-and-answer reflection on YouTube, an experiment with the speed of reading, an Instagram session receipt, two versions of an explanation with different levels of difficulty, and a diagram of the processes behind one AI-generated image. Each helped me turn a broad research question into something I could examine more closely.

Week 2

This week, I revisited my previous research on Design Friction and examined the assumptions surrounding smooth digital experiences. I identified who creates and repeats the idea that seamlessness represents good design, who benefits from that narrative, and who may be excluded or harmed by it. I also reviewed Donna Haraway’s “Situated Knowledges” and Nigel Cross’s “Designerly Ways of Knowing.” These readings helped me consider how knowledge is shaped by different positions and how design practice itself can function as a form of inquiry. I then connected these ideas to examples involving accessibility, Screen Time, social media scrolling, content moderation, data labeling, and the material infrastructure behind AI systems.

Week 1

This week, I revisited my thesis research on Design Friction from last semester and considered how I could expand it through my thesis.

Weel 6: Provotype

Nothing for now

Other questions or notes

Week 5

No additional questions at this time.

Week 4

No additional questions or notes at this time.

Week 3

No additional questions at this time.

Week 2

No additional questions or personal notes at this time.

Week 1

I do not have any additional questions or personal notes at this time.

Weel 6: Provotype

No additional questions at this time.

References

Week 5

Week 4

Week 3

Week 2

W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2

Design Frictions on Social Media

Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System

Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen

Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work

Shoshana Zuboff, Big Other

Big other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization
Paper · journals.sagepub.comBig other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information CivilizationShoshana Zuboff · 2015
About this paper

This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ The institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles…

Week 1

Reading

Design Frictions for Mindful Interactions: The Case for Microboundaries

Better Slow than Sorry: Introducing Positive Friction for Reliable Dialogue Systems

Reference

Article

Weel 6: Provotype