TockTick : Adding Friction to TikTok Interaction

Abstract: Many different strategies have been used to study screen time control to deal with the side effects of dark patterns. However, users might be annoyed by those methods that create too strong “friction” and give them up too soon. To explore this design space, I turned to reflective design, which is a systematic approach including participants in the design process for critical reflection and new knowledge. Since TikTok is a representative prevalent social media platform in recent years, in this study, I did a reflective design of 5 interventions of adding “weak friction” to the TikTok platform as a probe and invited 8 participants to test them. The results suggest there is an untapped potential for weak friction to counteract the side effects of dark patterns and support novel self-restriction ways when using social media apps. The probe also resulted in rich material that documented participants’ attitudes, feelings and expectations of friction, in order to raise attention from researchers, UX practitioners and authorities of designing friction in social media apps.