
Principles of Calm Technology - chaghalibaghali
http://www.calmtech.com/
======
teekert
I love my Pebble, my phone is always on completely silent mode and nobody but
me feels or hears the Pebble. It feels quite private. I can ignore it during
conversions and see what it has to say whenever I look at my wrist later. I
can blindly dismiss notifications, knowing they are still open on my phone for
later. I never miss important calls but I can also refuse calls without
looking away from someone I have a conversation with just by touching my
wrist.

But oh man is it infuriating when the Pebble shows me a spam message, for some
reason it evokes hate against the spamming company to a much larger the degree
than it does on my phone. I'm much more selective about what app can have
notification on the Pebble. It's strange, the smartwatch just feel closer to
me and it feels like people mess with me when "they use it" to disturb me for
useless things.

Sorry, not really a point in this comment but it felt significant to the point
of the website.

~~~
komali2
I think it's relevant. I think there should be an addendum: the human should
have total control over "how important" a given technology is to it. So for
example, there's maybe 3 apps on my phone out of 50 that are allowed to use
notifications. I'm always horrified when I pick up my mom's phone and it's
swamped with notifications, popups in the status bar, lock screen flooded
over, yuck.

~~~
throwanem
Consider, when describing an arbitrary and even perhaps notional human in the
singular, using _literally any pronoun other than 'it'_. Neuter humans are
very rare, and, at least in English, using grammatically neutral pronouns to
refer to humans has a long and unlovely history.

Use the singular 'they' instead. If you find that too grammatically egregious
to be borne (as I do), alternate masculine and feminine pronouns (as I do). Or
default to the feminine pronoun except when speaking specifically of someone
male. Or default to the grammatical, if presently unfashionable, collective
use of masculine pronouns. Just, seriously, do _something_ that doesn't entail
referring to a human as 'it'.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Use the singular 'they' instead. If you find that too grammatically
> egregious to be borne

Then you've bought into the bizarre, quixotic, and increasingly-being-rejected
effort by Victorian elites to try to pretend that English is some strange
constructed Latinate language and not, well, English.

And you should give up.

OTOH, if you really need to refer to a gender neutral _abstract_ person in
English, and _really_ can't bring yourself to use "they", learn to use "one"
properly. This can require restructuring sentence and not just dropping a
different pronoun in, e.g., this:

    
    
      the human should have total control over "how important" a given technology is to it.
    

might become:

    
    
      one should have total control over "how important" a given technology is to oneself.

~~~
jdmichal
Wider usage of "one" \-- in German, _man_ \-- is something I miss from
studying German. It's a pretty elegant solution when it can be used.

Of course, the German version catches flak for being too close to "man" (
_Mann_ ), and is sometimes replaced with _frau_ ( _Frau_ meaning "woman"). So
it goes.

------
begriffs
Reminds me of these desiderata from an essay by Wendell Berry:

\-----------

To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for technological
innovation in my own work. They are as follows:

1\. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2\. It should be
at least as small in scale as the one it replaces. 3\. It should do work that
is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces. 4\. It should use
less energy than the one it replaces. 5\. If possible, it should use some form
of solar energy, such as that of the body. 6\. It should be repairable by a
person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary
tools. 7\. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as
possible. 8\. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that
will take it back for maintenance and repair. 9\. It should not replace or
disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and
community relationships.

~~~
jl6
Just wondering, is there any example of technological innovation that meets
these criteria?

~~~
ihaveajob
All other things being equal, if you improve in just one of these dimensions,
you are doing it right.

~~~
vinceguidry
Only so long as other dimensions don't degrade. In practice, that's usually
what happens.

------
falcolas
I'm reminded of a recent article about how technology and automation should be
Iron Man, not Ultron. Assist and empower the user, don't take over for them
completely. This allows for human oversight, keeps skills relevant (for when
the automation fails), and still allows for significant progress.

Seems to have a lot of overlap with these principles.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
This leads off in interesting directions, though. For example, people complain
that students shouldn't just use calculators, but in the developed world, the
chances of not having access to a working calculator on a phone or computer
are very small (that said, it's good to know what the machine is doing for
you, even if you don't want to do it yourself). Compare that to phone numbers
- even a generation ago, it was common to have memorized half-dozen 10 digit
phone numbers for friends and family members. Are we diminished somehow now
for having offloaded that to machines? Or was it work we shouldn't have ever
had to take on?

~~~
dubya
Specifically regarding calculators, the idea is that knowing how to calculate
aids in understanding later math that depends on calculation.

Phone numbers don't lead to other interesting ideas, that I can think of.
Didn't dialing originally work by just picking up the handset and telling the
operator who you wanted to talk to?

------
gregfjohnson
I love the calm technology principles. A serious problem, though, is that the
interests of the technology provider do not necessarily align with the
interests of the technology user. Here is an example. (This is speculative on
my part. Anyone who is more familiar with the history here, please chime in.)
In the earliest days of telephone, it was in the interest of the phone company
that callees answer incoming calls. No answer, no revenue. So, the phones
generated jarring, noisy, almost violent clanging noises. We all became
Pavlov's dogs for the phone company.

I'm afraid that there will always be an underwhelming minority of technology
users who make conscious choices to purchase and encourage calm technology.

One admittedly tepid hope is that society-scale evolution will eventually
help. Communities that embrace calm technology will be more fit and ultimately
successful than those that acquiesce to jarring, rude, and disruptive
technologies that foster a passive, frantic, reactive, unreflective, and
anxious consciousness.

~~~
jackarg
> acquiesce to jarring, rude, and disruptive technologies that foster a
> passive, frantic, reactive, unreflective, and anxious consciousness.

I totally agree with this and love the calm technology principle as well. I'd
like to draw attention to the "Time Well Spent" project started by Google's
"product philosopher," as I think it's very similar and equally as important.
[http://timewellspent.io/](http://timewellspent.io/)

------
maxander
I love that people are thinking about how technology interacts with the user,
since we're terrible enough at that still, but there's another aspect that
this kind of thinking doesn't recognize, where we're arguably _even worse_ \-
how technology interacts with _non-users_.

Unless we're shut up in our own private rooms (and often enough, even then)
we're all constantly getting the "Status Shouts" of devices completely
unrelated to us. Is a truck down the street from your window set in reverse?
You'll know. Did someone down the hall leave their cellphone unattended on
their desk? You'll find out if they get a call. Goodness forbid that you share
a building with someone who doesn't change the batteries in their smoke
alarms! All of these are okay design decisions when considering one device and
one human user, but in an environment where there can dozens of humans and
thousands of devices in a city block, they become drastically less apt.

~~~
nradov
So what would you propose as an alternative? Trucks beep when they reverse
because people were literally run over by trucks. Smoke detectors beep when
backup batteries are low because people died in fires.

I can sympathize with people who hate those noises, but I think the only
practical solutions are for them to wear earplugs or move somewhere with lower
population density.

~~~
drjasonharrison
There are "white noise" back up sounds that are used when the trucks are
expected to be used at night.

~~~
pimlottc
Fascinating, here's a good demo video:
[https://youtu.be/psWBaxtK19g?t=1m11s](https://youtu.be/psWBaxtK19g?t=1m11s)

------
hawski
I wholeheartedly agree.

It is a bit like Unix principles (please, don't hit me!) - if program
succeeded it should not output anything by default.

    
    
        $ cp foo bar
        $
    

Problem of course is if something is taking longer time. I prefer microwaves
with single ding at the end to one that is beeping every 3 seconds (I have
such one at my work). Of course microwaves have also clear progress bar.
Android is guilty many times of doing something in background and not showing
it at all. I think that abundance of log messages or showing progress is just
laziness at users expense.

My Roomba talks to me in my language when something is wrong. It is helpful
for less common notifications (like clean the brush). But it is annoying for
common things - like Roomba notifying that it stuck on the middle of carpet
for no apparent reason. In common case I would prefer it to not occur than to
have other means of notifying me.

Status lights should be so much dimmer than lights currently most devices
have. With all the devices around me it sometimes looks like it's Christmas.

Modal popups are very hard to do right. I think many times it would be better
to have simple means of undoing the action with non-modal popup and additional
way to undo not that recent actions. I understand that it may be not that easy
- i.e. removing something. For example I am baffled that adding a word to
dictionary in Google Keyboard needs additional popup (that appears half a
second later thanks to useless animation). I would prefer it to just show non
obstructing popup with option to undo addition of the word.

~~~
wruza
>I prefer microwaves with single ding at the end to one that is beeping every
3 seconds

I forgot my food in beeping oven constantly, just because I semi-opened it to
prevent beeps but did not extract contents because it was too hot. Even when I
look at it, the fact that the door is not closed automagically means to my
brain that there is nothing inside.

How it _should_ be done: ding once, light inside. Open door -> turn it off.

------
nickpsecurity
I like the article. Another commenter here gave a good example with the
Android phones overloaded with notifications. I'm going to illustrate the
right way with communications embedded into non-communication products.

There were older, desktop apps that made modal dialogs appear that blocked you
from doing anything if you had an update, message, whatever. I later saw that
turn into a dedicated box with significant chunk of screen. At least I could
do other things. Later, there was a menu or window somewhere that could be
opened with the notifications being smaller instead of the message itself.
Later, on Xbox Live, they made the notifications pop up in top-center of
screen with very little info in them. They also let me turn them off with a
one-button method of checking if anything happened in-game. A further
enhancement of this might be replacing the popup with a distinct, mellow,
sound effect that blends into in-game sounds in such a way to stand out but
not jolt a person out of the game. Not just preserving the mood of one but
also not say masking sound of enemy footsteps.

So, in just that one area, things have improved remarkably from the time when
developers said, "We're going to shove this in their faces and force them to
pay attention." I'd love to see more such improvements across the board
leading to calmer software.

------
gavinpc
> Give people what they need to solve their problem, and nothing more

If this is true, then "tools for thought" can never be "calm technology,"
since creative thinking is not just about problem solving, but problem
_finding_.

I completely agree that—when you're talking about thinking tools—"technology
should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity." But I don't
see how it applies to any of the examples given (including "lavatory sign,"
trend graph, office window, and, of course, teapot).

> How many are notifications are necessary?

OT, but it seems no technology is so calm these days that people can
effectively proofread the first 58 words of their web site—not even an author
promoting her book.

------
ninjakeyboard
Small typo: I think "How many are notifications are necessary?" should read
"How many notifications are necessary?"

~~~
IncRnd
That jumped out at me, too.

~~~
harry-wood
me too. It made me feel less calm

------
jarmitage
Not sure about this website, but the original essay by Mark Weiser should be
required reading for HN crowd IMO:

[http://homes.di.unimi.it/~boccignone/GiuseppeBoccignone_webp...](http://homes.di.unimi.it/~boccignone/GiuseppeBoccignone_webpage/IUM2_files/weiser-
calm.pdf)

------
rainhacker
> Machines shouldn't act like humans

I'm surprised - does that mean ML/AI isn't calm ? Why ?

~~~
rajadigopula
Maybe to emphasize that machines are there to make the human task easy but not
let them get lazy and develop a hard dependency on the machine! As in - I
can't do this without using some X machine, is a clear sign that we developed
a hard dependency on the machine and we fail to learn/understand how to do the
task without using the machine.

Happening a lot, the boundary is fading slowly. The human dependency on
machines is constantly increasing, intelligent/ AI machines take this to next
level e.g. Self-driving cars.

~~~
Kadin
It's been a very long time since humans haven't been dependent on machines.
There's a legitimate question to how complex the supply chains are that
produce those machines, and whether as a result it makes society and
civilization more fragile (if I'm dependent on farm implements from a
blacksmith in the center of town, that's different from being dependent on LED
displays only made in 3 factories in the world, all of which are on the other
side of the planet). But I think the general idea of "don't become dependent
on machines" is a ship that sailed long before any of us were even born.

------
vonnik
I love this piece. I also feel pessimistic about calm tech because a lot of
tech companies have perverse incentives to addict and perpetually disturb
their users in order to gain mindshare and sell ads.

~~~
jackarg
There needs to be a generation or current of people in tech working against
the trend to addict and disturb their users for profit maximization and
pushing for some kind of ethical limit.

------
sotojuan
I've been on this website many times and read the book. I long for the day
everyone follows these principles.

"Technology should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity".

~~~
gavinpc
Have you read any Don Norman? Like _Emotional Design_ or _The Design of
Everyday Things_? Based on the principles (and even the examples) given here,
I'm wondering how this book adds to that work.

~~~
eswat
"Technology should work even when it fails" was the tenant that seemed the
most relevant to that book. Usually when technology fails there’s a good
chance the user will suffer in a way, such as feeling embarrassment or having
to repeat a task again. Caring more about how technology fails gracefully
would help figure out how to mitigate negative feelings the user might
experience if such edge cases happen.

------
combatentropy
I enjoyed the article. I have often thought that any new device should add no
net complexity. Preferably it should reduce overall complexity.

------
andy_ppp
Centering lists so that the bullets do not line up does not make me
calm...</ocd>

