Calm Technology

Chapter 4. Exercises in Calm Technology

Note

For the latest version of these exercises, see http://calmtech.com/exercises.

TO BEGIN WITH, WE’RE going to assume that most of the situations where you will be tasked with applying Calm Design principles will be ones that involve modifying existing interactions, rather than creating new ones. This recognizes the reality that technology gets created through improvement and iteration far more often than through disruption. Even in the case of a genuinely new device, service, or piece of software, the new is often still based on well-established standards. If you’re making a smart light bulb, you still need to base it on existing light bulbs. Otherwise, it won’t fit into the current ecosystem of related devices. More importantly, people won’t know how to use it. You can’t expect to change behavior unless you build on what people already know, so you will have to know how to make a connection from current technology to your innovation in the minds of users.

For designers seeking to make interactions with technology more “calm,” this means expanding the idea of when a design task is “done.” Frequently, when technology isn’t calm, it’s not because of any intentional decision about notifications and alerts, but because of a lack of intent—we often think of a design as “complete” when it fulfills all of its functions, and leave the details of how it communicates to the user as an afterthought. This is a ubiquitous problem in the world of design. ...