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Digital Interface Design and Power: Friction, Threshold, Transition

Ash, J.; Anderson, B.; Gordon, R.; Langley, P.

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Authors

J. Ash

R. Gordon



Abstract

This paper draws upon the example of High-Cost Short-Term Credit products accessed via digital interfaces and devices to examine practices of interface design and the operation of digitally mediated power. Utilising interviews with High-Cost Short-Term Credit website designers and users of these products, the paper shows how these interfaces are designed and tested to manage frictions: practical, affective or emotional contestations that interrupt or stop users from applying for these products and entering into credit and debt. We suggest that the key role of interface design is to manage these frictions by guiding action in such a way to minimise negative affective states at key thresholds of the application process. The management of friction is enabled by practices of data-driven design, where the contingency of human response is engineered through analytics in order to increase rates of application. Working through the example of High-Cost Short-Term Credit, the paper complicates a notion of control as a smooth or automatic operation of power, instead emphasising the necessity of both continuity and discontinuity as key to modulating action in a digital age. To understand the specificity of interface interactions and move beyond existing work on control, we offer a vocabulary of friction, thresholds and transitions.

Citation

Ash, J., Anderson, B., Gordon, R., & Langley, P. (2018). Digital Interface Design and Power: Friction, Threshold, Transition. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(3), 1136-1153. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818767426

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 24, 2018
Online Publication Date Apr 13, 2018
Publication Date Dec 31, 2018
Deposit Date Apr 3, 2018
Publicly Available Date Apr 3, 2018
Journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
Print ISSN 0263-7758
Electronic ISSN 1472-3433
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 36
Issue 3
Pages 1136-1153
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818767426
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1336122

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Accepted Journal Article (691 Kb)
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Copyright Statement
Ash, J., Anderson, B., Gordon, R. & Langley, P. (2018). Digital Interface Design and Power: Friction, Threshold, Transition. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36(3): 1136-1153 https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818767426 Copyright © 2018 The Author(s). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications






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