In Designing Friction, Luna Maurer, Roel Wouters and Alexandra Barancová challenge the pursuit of seamlessness in digital technology. Their proposition that "designing friction is exploring boundaries"⁴ reframes friction not simply as an obstacle to interaction, but as a means through which the limits and conditions of an interaction can become perceptible.

Breathing Room approaches friction in this sense, although its resistance takes a particular form. Friction does not arise primarily from making interaction more difficult, nor from resisting technological measurement itself. It emerges when a technological relationship ceases to be seamless: when sensing becomes perceptible, when presence produces a consequence, and when the environment does not simply accommodate whatever is asked of it.

As occupancy increases, the proposed membrane contracts. This movement can be understood as the room responding to the people inside it, but response does not necessarily mean accommodation. The room makes less space available. In this sense, contraction can also be understood as a form of withdrawal. This introduces reciprocity into the ethics of responsiveness.

Friction, here, is not simply making something difficult. It is the moment when a relationship stops being seamless enough for its limits to become noticeable. Responsiveness does not always have to mean: How can I serve you?