Heuristic: The Friction Lens
The single most important principle of this workshop is: We start with reality, not with technology.
The “Friction Lens” is the simple but powerful diagnostic tool we use to see that reality clearly. It’s a way of looking at your business to find opportunities for improvement by spotting inefficiencies in how your team works. Before we can talk about AI solutions, we must first find the real, existing friction that needs to be solved.
What is “Friction”?
In the context of this workshop, Friction is any point in a workflow where progress slows down, stalls, or becomes difficult for the people involved. It’s the sand in the gears of your business operations.
Friction is not a technical flaw; it is a signal for opportunity. It points directly to where you can create the most value for your team and your customers.
How to Spot Friction in Your Business
Use this checklist to apply the Friction Lens to your own processes. Look for workflows that exhibit these common signals:
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Human Bottlenecks: Is there a task that only one or two people know how to do? What happens if they are sick or on vacation?
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Process Delays: Where do things get stuck waiting for an approval, a piece of information from another department, or a decision from a manager?
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Excessive Rework: What work has to be done over and over again? Where do misunderstandings or errors force your team to redo their work?
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Knowledge Gaps: Is there a process that a 20-year veteran finds easy, but a new hire struggles with? This indicates that critical knowledge isn’t documented or standardized.
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Undesirable Work: What is the task that everyone on the team hates doing? Processes that are painful, tedious, or mind-numbing are prime candidates for improvement.
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Siloed Information: Do your teams have to manually pull data from multiple different systems to build a single report? Are insights being missed because information isn’t connected?
How to Apply It in the Workshop
The Friction Lens is the very first tool you will use. In your Scaffold - Workflow Analysis, you will:
- Describe the “Human Experience” of a workflow.
- Use the checklist above to perform a “Friction Analysis” for each step, identifying exactly what makes it difficult.
Once you have identified and documented the friction, you are ready for the next step: using the Heuristic - The SEA Framework to define the value of removing it.
Final Thought
Friction isn’t a problem to be ashamed of; it’s the raw material for innovation. By learning to see it, you are learning to see the most valuable opportunities for growth in your business.
RFQ Workflow — Friction Signals
- Missing enclosure IP evidence vs. spec minima (e.g., IP66/IP67) despite explicit requirements in instrumentation specs.
- EMC/EMI declarations referenced in quality docs but not attached.
- Hazardous‑area variant ambiguity (flameproof vs non‑flameproof) causing weakest‑link uncertainty.
- Power supply mismatch (offer 240V 1Ph vs site baseline) requiring variant/deviation decisions.
- Annex bloat or mismatch (manifests listing items not referenced) causing handoff delays.
References: Discovery Documentation/Safety Shower RFQ Workflow.md; Design & Build Workshop/MVP Documentation/Safety Shower MVP.md