Friction at the front door? That’s the last place you want it
In response to M&IT's recent piece on friction-maxxing, Reftech MD Margaret Reeves tells us why we got it wrong: there are some parts of events where it never pays to add tension...
A piece published in M&IT suggests that corporate events may have become a little too frictionless, arguing that in smoothing everything out we may also have stripped away some of what makes experiences memorable.
It’s a useful provocation, but it’s also slightly misdirected.
Because when it comes to registration, friction isn’t something we should be thinking about reintroducing. It’s something the industry has spent years trying to remove, and quite rightly so.
No one has ever left an event talking about how brilliant the registration process was, yet plenty will remember, often in detail, the times it went wrong - the queue that snaked around the foyer, the badge printer that refused to cooperate, the slightly chaotic scramble as staff tried to resolve issues in real time. That’s what friction looks like in practice, and it’s not adding anything of value.
In fact, good registration should be almost entirely invisible.
Margaret Reeves, managing director of RefTech
Margaret Reeves, managing director of RefTech
"The suggestion that we might reintroduce friction at registration sounds appealing in theory but quickly falls apart in practice."
If it’s working as it should, it barely registers. People arrive, check in, collect what they need and move on without giving it a second thought, which is exactly how it should be. Registration isn’t the experience; it’s simply the gateway to it, and the best gateways don’t draw attention to themselves, they just do their job quietly and efficiently in the background.
That’s where technology has a very clear role to play. Its job is to remove unnecessary barriers between arrival and engagement, ensuring that check-in is fast, badge printing is reliable, and systems work together in a way that feels seamless rather than stitched together. When that foundation is in place, it creates the space for everything else to happen properly, but when it isn’t, it undermines the entire experience before it’s even begun.
This is where the wider conversation about “friction” needs a bit more balance.
There is a valid point in the idea that events have become overly polished, that everything runs smoothly but perhaps a little too predictably, and that something is lost when there’s no sense of effort, challenge or spontaneity. But that kind of thinking applies to the experience itself - the content, the interactions, the moments that actually engage people - not the operational processes designed to get people through the door.
The suggestion that we might reintroduce friction at registration, for example by requiring people to speak to someone rather than using self-service, sounds appealing in theory but quickly falls apart in practice. All it really does is slow things down, increase staffing requirements, create queues and introduce inconsistency, which brings us straight back to the very problems the industry has worked hard to solve. And for what, exactly? A forced interaction at the point people are simply trying to get in the room is unlikely to add value, but very likely to add frustration.
Registration is not where you introduce tension or unpredictability. It’s where you remove it completely.
The reality is that people don’t remember good registration because there’s nothing to remember. What stays with them are the moments when it fails, when something slows them down, frustrates them or creates unnecessary stress at the very start of their day. And once that first impression has been made, it’s remarkably difficult to undo.
So rather than questioning whether things have become too seamless, the focus should be on making sure that seamlessness is robust, consistent and dependable, because that’s what allows the rest of the event to stand on its own.
If there is a place for a bit of friction, it’s not at the front door. It’s further inside, where it can be designed deliberately into the experience to prompt interaction, encourage participation and create something that feels more meaningful.
Registration has a much simpler brief; it should work and then get out of the way. Do it well, and no one notices. Do it badly, and it becomes the only thing people talk about, which tells you everything you need to know about where friction does, and doesn’t, belong.