Calm Technology

Chapter 5. Calm Technology in Your Organization

AT THIS POINT, WE’VE established the value of Calm Technology in an abstract sense, but making the case for incorporating it into a specific project or embedding it in an organization is another task entirely. To begin with, it’s worth asking why Calm Technology is valuable as an organizational principle.

Why do you need Calm Technology in your organization? Most directly, it’s a powerful organizing idea that can provide clear goals for setting limitations and reduce the risk of overdesigning the end product. This ultimately reduces costs for assembly, support, and use.

You might think you’re saving money by getting to market as quickly as possible, without spending a ton of effort calming down your user experience, but think of the longer-term outcome. A less calm, fussier interface means more confused users, more calls to tech support, and more need for patches and updates down the line. Design for calmness now and you’ll save money later, when it really counts.

Building Teams for Calm Technology

Calm Tech is best worked on using lean principles, which means, more than anything, reducing the number of stakeholders involved in a project. Teams with fewer stakeholders get things done faster, are more likely to take risks, and have the ability to make mistakes without fear of career failure or retribution from colleagues or higher-ups.

You can reduce stakeholder numbers in several ways. One tactic that’s proven surprisingly effective is ...