By means of the Jacobi structure associated with a contact structure, we use the so-called evolution vector field to propose a new characterization of isolated thermodynamical systems with friction, a simple but important class of thermodynamical systems which naturally satisfy the first and second laws of thermodynamics, i.e. total energy preservation of isolated systems and non-decreasing total entropy, respectively. We completely clarify its qualitative dynamics, the underlying geometrical structures and we also show how to apply discrete gradient methods to numerically integrate the evolution equations for these systems.