Yes, because Deft Focus and Friction Resistance are different types of cards. Deft Focus gives you an action that lets play a card at a discount. It is an action, so you need to activate the action and THEN play the card. Friction Resitance gives you a resource: you use it to pay for cards (or other things that require resources). Thus, you invoke it when you need to pay for something. In the case of playing cards, that is AFTER selecting the card to play.
So what is implemented in the app is the correct way of using these cards. Even when playing physically, that is the correct order: first you select the card to play and then you generate the resources.