If user-friendliness characterizes the relationship between the user and the optimal object, user-unfriendliness then, a form of gentle provocation, could characterize the post-optimal object. The emphasis shifts from optimizing the fit between people and electronic objects through transparent communication, to providing aesthetic experiences through the electronic objects themselves.

But if aliens and user-unfriendliness are to be the alternatives to pets and user-friendliness, this user-unfriendliness does not have to mean user-hostility. Constructive user-unfriendliness already exists in poetry:

The poetic function of language has as its effect that when we read literature we become more aware of language than we are when we are confronted by language in its other functions. To introduce another term dear to the formalists, in literature language is foregrounded. This, as Jakobson stresses, is the tendency of literature, much more fully recognised in poetry than it is in prose. In the everyday use of language it will seldom be practical and may even be found impolite to foreground language. Everyday language is usually informative and instrumental; there is no call for either the speaker/ writer or hearer/reader to dwell on the form of what is said/written since if a piece of information has been successfully passed or some action successfully instigated, the words by which this has been managed can count as transparent. With the poetic function comes a certain opacity, for the writer is no longer passing information nor seeking to instigate action. There may also come an intentional ambiguity. (Sturrock 1986, 109 110)