Amber Case

How can you design technology that becomes a part of a user’s life and not a distraction from it? This practical book explores the concept of calm technology, a method for smoothly capturing a user’s attention only when necessary, while calmly remaining in the background most of the time. You’ll learn how to design products that work well, launch well, are easy to support, easy to use, and remain unobtrusive. Author Amber Case presents ideas first introduced by researchers at Xerox PARC in 1995, and explains how they apply to our current technology landscape, especially the Internet of Things. This book is ideal for UX and product designers, managers, creative directors, and developers. You’ll learn: The importance and challenge of designing technology that respects our attention Principles of calm design—peripheral attention, context, and ambient awareness Calm communication patterns—improving attention through a variety of senses Exercises for improving existing products through calm technology Principles and patterns of calm technology for companies and teams The origins of calm technology at Xerox PARC

Principles and Patterns for Non-intrusive Design

Calm Technology

Claudine

When a technology forces a low resolution update into the high resolution space of your full attention, it wastes your time, attention, and patience. This is why it’s crucial, when building a piece of technology, to consider whether the technology you’re trying to get across is actually a high resolution or low resolution one. Does it require the users attention, or can you get it across with a lower resolution alert type? 

A calm experience is when you’re performing a primary task and an alert shows up in your periphery, like a dashboard light indicating you need to fill up the gas can, or the one telling you you’re too close to the side of the road. Indications like these improve or inform your primary task (in this case, driving) and give you a sense of calm while you do something else. Calm experience does not demand your full attention. 

… But properly done, design will remove the burden of tasks from the user, which is the goal of Calm Technology.

Think of how many things in your life just happened without you noticing: water when you turn on the faucet, the lights when you flip a switch, the realization of the friend is online given by a green indicator in upper Skype or uppercase Google Chat. All of these technologies that are calm because they have evolved to work with us in our everyday lives with at least amount of friction. A shrill alert, yanks you out of your current task and requires you to refocus attention on something new.

When it’s uncertain whether something is operating — especially if it’s recording information — people tend to assume that it is.

When building technology, we should strive to communicate information to the user without interrupting or distracting them from their primary goal.

Calm Technology quotes

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