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Lookup NU author(s): Professor James Ash, Dr Rachel Gordon, Dr Philip Langley
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Sage Publications Ltd., 2018.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
This paper draws upon the example of High-Cost-Short Term Credit (HCSTC) products accessed via digital interfaces and devices to examine practices of interface design and the operation of digitally mediated power. Utilising interviews with HCSTC website designers and users of these products, the paper shows how these interfaces are designed and tested to manage frictions: practical, affective or emotional blocks 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 intentional or propositional thought and 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 HCSTC, 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.
Author(s): Ash J, Anderson B, Gordon R, Langley P
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
Year: 2018
Volume: 36
Issue: 6
Pages: 1136-1153
Print publication date: 01/12/2018
Online publication date: 13/04/2018
Acceptance date: 24/02/2018
Date deposited: 20/03/2018
ISSN (print): 0263-7758
ISSN (electronic): 1472-3433
Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818767426
DOI: 10.1177/0263775818767426
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