Reference
How we rate friction severity
Mild irritation or fuming frustration? Here's how we tell them apart.
Severity levels
The participant cannot complete the experience at all. Severe friction stops them from achieving the primary project outcome. The task is a dependency to complete the journey. The participant is therefore blocked from completing the task and can't continue the project tasks. Rare, and the most severe friction we record. Our model overrides all of their scores: their accessibility input is 0 at the project level.
Booking a flight, the participant couldn't navigate the dynamic price date picker. They couldn't perceive flight prices or select dates, so they couldn't book the flight.The participant is categorically blocked from completing one task, even though they can still use the rest of the experience. Regardless of how they scored that task, our model takes its accessibility score for just that task to 0. Their scores for other tasks are unaffected.
The participant couldn't read the flight booking confirmation text with their screen reader, but they could still navigate the website, create an account, navigate flight prices and options, complete the booking form and process a payment.The participant can't interact with a specific element within a task, but completes the task via a workaround. They aren't blocked at the task level. Our model looks at the severity of the friction and modifies the task score downwards based on various factors.
The participant couldn't interact with the primary navigation menu at all. They found the page they were looking for after searching for links and then trying via the search box instead.Major difficulty requiring substantial effort to overcome. Multiple failed attempts, extended time, or workaround required. Would likely cause abandonment without persistence.
Participant eventually found "Contact Us" after searching 4+ minutes across multiple pages because it was buried in low-contrast footer text.Noticeable impediment causing delay, hesitation, or confusion. Completion was never in doubt but experience was degraded.
The participant spent over a minute scanning the page for the right action to proceed. Multiple competing buttons gave no clear indication which one moved them forward to the next step.A minor inconvenience the participant noticed but didn't have to work around. Worth tracking in aggregate to spot patterns, but doesn't meaningfully affect any individual score.
The participant glanced at the form's progress indicator twice during a four-step flow to confirm where they were, but never paused or hesitated to continue.Participant was impressed or delighted by an interaction.
Expressed satisfaction — "wow that was easy".
