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What are Friction Logs? – 6 Things to Know About It

posted on 06-07-2015
“Web development projects carried out with high-quality tools and technologies are user friendly.” Some web developers might say that this statement is controversial, but one of the most prominent challenges of software design and development is that all things that make a web product easy to use are very often small and might as well seem inconsequential independently. With consistent APIs, simple instructions, uncluttered UI, and logical defaults, web products become seemingly good. However, it is common to find a credible web developer from a web development company in India to seem a little sheepish when it comes to locating a bug. Practically, bugs are more than likely to annoy many web developers, but if bugs are the only problem then they won’t block an otherwise adoption of a great web product. The only concern is that when little problems like these begin to pile up, the end result is either a library or a tool that no one will be willing to use. This is where friction logs come into the picture and offer a reliable solution to web developers. Let’s see how: Friction Logs: A friction log is actually an important document that is responsible for listing the little things that make a certain tool difficult to use. The framing of these little problems is mostly done around a customer use case or a narrative. Web developers mostly learn about friction logs and the process of documenting them when they first start working. Web developers from some of the top web development companies in India make it a practice to write friction logs for common scenarios that they might be familiar with from their previous work. In the points given below, we will have a look at six things that must be known about friction logs in general:
  1. Friction Log: a UX experiment: A friction log can be thought of as a UX experiment where the web developers subject feelings, ideas, and another type of emotion. The aim of friction log is to surface anything that gives a discomfort or joy with an aim to improve the feature of products.
When the web developers from the best web design and development company in India maintain a habit of keeping up with the friction log, it improves their tech products significantly. For this reason, the friction log is an important practice that can uplift the quality of work.
  1. Issues are Put in Context: An important difference between a friction log and a bug list is that the friction log is a document that categorizes contextual issues. Documentation of a friction log is like narrating a story of the complete user experience from beginning to end.
Any software development company in India that follows the practice of compiling well-written friction logs has a better chance of developing products that will be well-liked by the users. This is because web developers develop a sense of user empathy with the help of friction logs, which ultimately helps in making web products that are aligned with customer needs.
  1. Scenario-Based Web Development: The template of a commonly used friction log has the logger’s name, platform/language/browser, date, product relevance, etc. By filling in these basics, the logger gets a chance to describe the scenario that is being tried.
If a web developer wants to succeed then this is the most important part of a friction log. The scenario must be simple, short, and well structured so that web development can be carried out easily. For example; some of these friction logs can be “Download a picture of the tree from Google Cloud Storage.” Another one of these scenarios can be, “Move XYZ website to Google Cloud Storage.” These are a couple of scenarios that can make good friction logs because these are likely to be used by many users.
  1. Web Developers Approach Friction Logs as Users: Friction logs represent all that a user does and the reactions that users might have while working through use cases. The web developers must do the following things while approaching Friction logs as users:
  • If a web developer searches for something online, it is important to write down the search terms.
  • If a web developer is searching for a third link in the results, a note of that must be made so that the URL can be recorded.
  • In case a web developer types a command into a command line or writes code for that matter, then the code must be copied and pasted into the friction log.
With the help of friction logs, web developers can forget their inside knowledge and approach the problem just like a user would do. This can be another why the new web developers are known to be great friction loggers because they don’t know much about the inner working of the product to avoid any problems.
  1. Friction Logs Must Be Shared: Frictions logs prove to be highly useful for web development companies in India when they are shared with web developers who are empowered and inspired to make a change.
When the document is shared, other team members look at the log and correlate the known issues with existing bugs, while leaving comments to bugs in the logs. These comments prompt clarification and ultimately help in improving the user experience. In addition to any kind of product defects, friction logs also point out places where the SEO is poor or any type of documentation is missing.
  1. Friction Logs Improve User Experience: Friction logging does not end at finding things that do not work or enter bugs only. Rather, the focus in friction logging is on the entire user experience and recording of all places where things are rough or where a user is likely to experience friction.
Since there is a documented log of the complete experience, one can call attention to how the product fits together and how it works with other products. One of the best parts is that friction logs help the many engineering teams that ultimately ease the process of software development. CONCLUSION: In case you have not heard of friction logs before, you can find this tool in the dev rel toolkit. Additionally, in case you have used friction logs before then, this article will give you a detailed insight into different perspectives on how the scenario-based documentation can be helpful. Dedicated to offering the best user experience, ITMatic works with a user-oriented approach and implements the practice of friction logging frequently. If you want to know more about the services of ITMatic, get in touch to know more.