Effortful Design

A thesis by Ann Li which explores different ways effort can be leveraged to expand design practice, challenging designers (and users) to encounter, situate, prepare for, and practice effort.

Despite the expansion of technologies into increasingly personal aspects of life, much of the design discipline remains rooted in its traditionally commercial values, prioritizing efficiency, usability, and ease above all else. Effortful Design is an alternative which embraces the necessary effort inherent in many interactions. It is about encouraging creators to consider and create interactions that require more effort on the part of the user, as a response to designing solely for ease. By expanding the frame of our discipline, we might start to address other aspects of the human condition–that which is complex, often contradictory, and certainly not always easy–supporting the multiplicity of rich everyday experiences.

An Effortful Design approach is applied and tested through iterative cycles of participatory prototyping and guided workshops. Effort is leveraged as a value to drive the design process, which is facilitated by an interactive toolkit. This culminates in a system that exposes designers to a reflective practice, introduces a process that challenges creators to integrate effort in their work, and presents a platform that is developed further as a design tool. By demonstrating the value of designing for effort, this thesis makes a case for unconventional design beyond problem solving, efficiency, and ease, to rediscover what has been overlooked in the prevailing tradition—and within ourselves.

This project was made possible with support from the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund Microgrant #2024-071. Additional images found here.