From Patient Burnout to Perfectionism: Unpacking Friction Aversion in 2024
Authored by Meredydd Hardie
What you’ll learn:
Friction aversion is growing across social, workplace, academic, and medical settings, leading to efforts to minimize friction while educating consumers about managing inevitable challenges.
The trend towards frictionless experiences is influencing societal behaviors and expectations and driving demands for faster healthcare services and curated online interactions.
Signals of friction aversion include the rise of “pay to skip” services and administrative burden-reduction efforts while countermovements emphasize the value of deeper connections and accepting life’s inherent challenges.
Welcome to the fifth article in our series exploring the cultural forces and trends shaping our world in 2024.
In pharma and healthcare, it’s important to understand the industry-specific forces driving change. It’s also important to understand the larger forces impacting the wider culture. Our industry isn’t immune from these cultural forces; patients, HCPs, payers, and everyone else participate in the wider culture. Understanding cultural forces enables us to predict challenges and identify opportunities early. Our Klick Strategy community always looks for new angles to help us understand the world.
What to Know:
Whether we recognize it or not, we are all searching for a more frictionless experience
This desire to avoid friction is present in social, workplace, academic, and medical settings
Brands and services have long sought to optimize customer experience and reduce friction. This practice has now expanded to include virtually every industry and setting
Our heightened expectations can cause us all to overreact to even minor annoyances
Friction can’t be avoided entirely. Brands will need to find a solid compromise between reducing pain points and educating consumers and patients on how to manage friction
What is “Friction Aversion”?
In 2023, TIME magazine published an article titled, “Long Waits, Short Appointments, Huge Bills: U.S. Health Care Is Causing Patient Burnout.” The article describes the challenges patients face in getting treatment, not focusing on the big issues but rather the smaller, more mundane experiences of boredom, waiting, and administrative confusion. This experience can also be described as “friction.”
Living and working in a very online world optimized to reduce friction at every touchpoint has trained us to expect perfection and avoid friction at all costs. The rise of online platforms and technology has indeed conditioned people to expect seamless, frictionless experiences. Instant gratification and efficiency have become the norm, leading to a lower tolerance for inconveniences or delays. This trend is visible in various aspects of life, from customer service interactions to personal relationships.
On the positive side, increased efficiency and convenience can save time and enhance productivity. However, on the negative side, an aversion to friction may lead to a lack of resilience and adaptability when faced with challenges. Life inherently involves ups and downs, and the aversion to friction might hinder personal growth and resilience.
This cultural force can impact relationships, personal pursuits, and even societal norms. It’s crucial to balance enjoying the benefits of a streamlined world and acknowledging the inevitable friction of real-life experiences.
The Signals
In the introductory article of this series, we introduced the concept of signals as “Leaves” in our model of cultural forces. Signals are the fast-moving trends and fads that represent a moment in time. As a collection, they can indicate the direction in which culture is moving.
Several signals and factors tell us about this cultural force, including:
Signal: Rise of “pay to skip” services
Airports are hotbeds of friction at every interaction: check-in, baggage drop, security, boarding, and border control. Every step of a journey can be difficult
We can see a rise in programs that work to reduce or eliminate virtually all of this friction, most of which are pay-to-play:
Trusted traveler programs
The rise of airport lounge benefits and other credit card benefits like early boarding. According to Chase, lounge access is often the top-cited reason for its credit card sign-ups)
Signal: Pursuit of perfectionism
As perfectionism rises and we become more demanding of ourselves and others, our tolerance for disruption diminishes. We have unrealistically high expectations and experience even smaller amounts of friction as frustration
Signal: Pursuit of perfectionism
As perfectionism rises and we become more demanding of ourselves and others, our tolerance for disruption diminishes. We have unrealistically high expectations and experience even smaller amounts of friction as frustration
Signal: Disney—A case study in reducing friction
As it’s impossible to eliminate friction (lineups are inevitable), they have focused on making that experience as pleasant as possible
This shift wasn’t accidental. Disney set out to “eliminate friction at every touchpoint” and created a world where the friction-averse can relax—an unexpected paradise
We can see a similar trend in the rise of all-inclusive holidays
Signal: Paperwork pushback
Two-thirds of doctors in a Canadian Medical Association survey report that time on administration tasks has increased over the past five years
No one becomes a doctor or healthcare professional because of a passion for paperwork. The passion is patient care and helping people, and the increase in administrative burden is friction that gets in the way of the true work—this is why the administrative burden is such a driver of physician burnout
What Will Friction Aversion Look Like in 2024?
People are already working to remove friction from their lives (either consciously or unconsciously), and we can see this coming to life in social, professional, and medical settings:
Patients may become more impatient and expect quicker solutions to their health concerns, leading to an increased demand for immediate appointments, rapid diagnoses, and faster treatment outcomes. Healthcare providers may face pressure to deliver faster results, potentially affecting the quality of patient care
The aversion to friction could continue to influence social dynamics, potentially leading to more curated online personas and interactions. People might be inclined to avoid controversial or challenging discussions, which could impact the depth and authenticity of online relationships, especially in a healthcare setting
Businesses and services might focus on offering highly customized experiences to cater to individual preferences, reducing the chances of dissatisfaction or friction. However, striking a balance between customization and the potential loss of authenticity or spontaneity could become a challenge
The continuous pursuit of frictionless experiences may contribute to stress and anxiety when individuals are faced with inevitable challenges or uncertainties. Addressing mental health concerns related to the pressure for perfection and the avoidance of discomfort could become increasingly important
The Impact and Future of Friction Aversion
When we look at cultural forces, we must recognize that change doesn’t happen in one direction. If there is a considerable force in culture, a counterforce often pushes back against it. Societal dynamics are complex, and trends and behaviors may not be universally adopted.
Countermovements emphasizing the value of deeper connections, slower-paced living, and accepting life’s inevitable challenges may also gain traction, creating a nuanced cultural landscape. Balancing the benefits of frictionless experiences with the importance of resilience, patience, and meaningful connections will likely be a central theme in navigating the evolving cultural and societal impacts in the near future.
How to Leverage This Cultural Force
Recommendations:
Healthcare providers and policymakers need to navigate this trend carefully, ensuring that the pursuit of efficiency does not compromise healthcares quality, safety, and holistic nature. Illness and treatment will often be uncomfortable, scary, boring, and generally full of friction
Unlike Disney World, it isn’t something we can optimize completely
Education and communication about the importance of patience in healthcare, especially for long-term treatments and preventive care, will be crucial to managing these potential challenges
This article is our final exploration of the cultural forces shaping our world in 2024 and beyond. The Klick Strategic Futures team and wider strategy community will continue to explore the signals that inform us about our industry, world, and shared future throughout the rest of 2024.
Author
Meredydd Hardie
VP, Group Director Strategy
Meredydd is passionate about uncovering insights at the intersection of people, culture, and brand. With 15 years of experience, she has honed her skill translating signals into strategic intelligence. Her past roles in marketing involved providing innovative research methodologies and strategic insights for major brands like Coca-Cola and Toyota, enhancing their understanding of audience dynamics. At Klick, Meredydd applies her market research expertise across various healthcare domains, including oncology and mental health. She specializes in integrating diverse signal sources into research outputs from digital to market research, to guide Klick’s teams and clients in navigating the forces shaping the future.
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