The frictionless trap: a case for (good) frictions in the era of AI

We’re offloading our judgment to ‘frictionless’ AI tools faster than we’re questioning it. This talk explores Good Frictions — deliberate friction, by design — alongside two ingredients crucial for success: Agreements to build products at scale, and the Intuition user research can’t fully capture. Leave with your own recipe.

Forces

Format

Talk

Day

Thursday, Oct 15

Room

Auditorium

Time

01:10 PM

Frictionless is not neutral

Every time we remove effort, we also remove the ritual, the pause that used to build a capability or a certitude. Good Frictions argues for reintroducing deliberate friction — paired with explicit agreements and trust in intuition — as three key ingredients that can help us cook recipes — and products — that, while being good for business, do not erode what makes us better humans.

Why is this conversation important now?

As AI and frictionless tools quietly absorb more of our daily decisions and human capabilities, we risk optimizing away frictions, agreements, and intuitions that are essential — not only to designing relevant products, but to nurturing human talent and capability. We urgently need to revisit the AI transformation, blending the power of new technologies with human-centered agreements that secure a bright future for all of us.

Who is this session for?

Designers, product people or entrepreneurs who feel the pull of frictionless AI tools, sense something is being lost in the process, and want to find new ways to navigate uncertainty. If you are still searching for the right ‘recipe’ between objective data, subjective Intuition & the – precious – human Agreements required to build things at scale, this talk might be a good recipe for you.

Key takeaways

Attendees will leave having crafted their own personal future recipe:

1kg of Good Frictions — a list of frictions they'll secure and implement daily, to resist cognitive offloading and protect what makes them valuable humans.
1g of Agreements — one concrete agreement they commit to, to nurture human alignment in their design practice and everyday life.
A cup of Intuition — a set of rituals to listen more closely to their inner intuition, treating it as essential data for shaping their future.

Ignasi Giró Reig

Ignasi Giró Reig

Head of Strategic Design @ Airbus

Ignasi Giró is an empathy-led designer with more than twenty years of design experience. Author of Teoría Optimista del Fracaso (Optimistic Theory of Failure), he holds a Master’s in Physics and is Head of Strategic Design at Airbus, where he leads a multicultural team across three continents, designing strategic agreements and crafting new services & products for some of the world’s largest airlines.

Before Airbus, he was Lead Designer at SNCF, designing services for millions of users. Entrepreneur at heart, he co-founded companies in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris, created projects like the Timeless Box and worked with brands such as Moleskine, Nike, L’Oréal, AXA, P&G, HolaLuz or SEAT. He has taught at IESE, IED, University of Geneva… and his work has appeared in Wired, TechCrunch, or Fast Company. Today, he explores the intersection between AI and empathy in side projects such as empatree or Good Frictions, arguing that, in a world racing toward frictionless intelligences, the most disruptive choice is reinforcing frictionful human experiences.