Calm Technology

How can we design technology products that enter smoothly into people’s lives, rather than serve as a constant source of annoyance? In this video workshop, presenter Amber Case shows you how to use principles of Calm Technology, a framework for designing ubiquitous devices that engage a user’s attention only when necessary, while calmly remaining in the periphery most of the time.

Through a series of hands-on projects, you’ll learn how to design the next generation of connected devices, including notification styles, compressing information into other senses, and designing for the least amount of cognitive overhead. Calm Technology provides principles that keep people’s lifestyles and environment in mind, allowing technology to amplify humanness instead of taking it away.

With this video, you’ll learn how to:

• Design appropriate notification systems into both physical and software products
• Use methods of Calm Technology to design technology for generations, not seasons
• Communicate the principles of Calm Technology across your organization and team
• Enter your product successfully into the marketplace

This video workshop will show you how to design products that work well, launch well, are easy to support, easy to use, and blend smoothly into a person’s everyday life.

Amber Case is an entrepreneur and user experience designer from Portland, Oregon. She's been featured in Forbes, WIRED, Time, and other publications about her studies on the symbiotic interactions between humans and machines. Co-founder of the location-based platform Geoloqi (since acquired by Esri), she’s keynoted at SXSW.