Easy-to-process things feel truer, safer, and more appealing.
More quotesThe egg was not an ingredient. It was authorship.
Removing every task made the cake efficient and the baker irrelevant. Adding one small act returned enough skill and ownership for the result to feel made rather than dispensed.
Product teams worship friction removal because it gives dashboards a clean religion. Yet some effort is the value. Flat-pack furniture can become my table because I fought the Allen key. A meal kit removes shopping and measuring but leaves the chopping that makes dinner feel cooked. A website template saves layout work while preserving words and images that make the result belong to its owner.
Do not confuse this with adding chores. Asking for information the company already holds does not create pride. It creates swearing. Valuable effort must be visible, proportionate and connected to the outcome.
Separate labour customers hired the product to remove from participation they want to keep. Automate the dangerous, repetitive and joyless. Preserve the moment of taste, choice or skill that lets someone say, “I made this mine.”
Convenience is not the universal maximum. Sometimes doing everything for the customer removes the customer from the experience—and then acts baffled when they feel no pride in the result.