II. Technology should inform and create calm
Introduction
A technology informs when it changes what a person knows. It alarms when it changes what a person is doing. The difference is not volume or urgency but placement. Information that arrives where a person is already looking costs nothing to receive. Information that arrives by interrupting costs the task in progress.
Calm technology delivers status through the channel a person is already using, at the moment the status changes, and at a level matched to the importance of the change. A device that reports everything at the same intensity teaches people to ignore all of it.
- A car's temperature gauge sits in view for the length of a drive and is read in a glance.
- A cooking timer stays silent for the entire cooking period and speaks once.
- A watch face reports the time continuously without ever requesting attention.
The Whistling Kettle
A whistling kettle produces one signal, at one moment, for one reason. Water reaching a boil moves steam through a fitted opening and the kettle whistles. Nothing precedes the whistle. No progress bar, no percentage, no intermediate chime at seventy degrees.
The signal is also self-limiting. The whistle continues until the kettle is removed from the heat, which means the alert cannot be dismissed without resolving the condition that produced it. A person can leave the room and still be informed, because the sound carries and because it has no competition from other sounds the kettle makes.
A kettle that informs does not need to:
- Report its progress toward boiling
- Confirm that it has been filled
- Announce that it has been turned on
- Distinguish between levels of urgency
Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown described this quality in "Designing Calm Technology" (Xerox PARC, 1995) using Natalie Jeremijenko's Dangling String, a plastic cord attached to a motor wired to an Ethernet cable. Network traffic made the string twitch. Heavy traffic made it whirl. Nobody had to read it, and nobody had to dismiss it.
Just as a kettle stays silent until the water boils, well-designed technology reports the state that matters at the moment it changes and stays quiet the rest of the time.
Categories
- Pass-Through Technologies
- Principles of Calm Technology
- I. Technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention
- II. Technology should inform and create calm
- III. Technology should make use of the periphery
- IV. Technology should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity
- V. Technology can communicate, but doesn't need to speak
- VI. Technology should work even when it fails
- VII. The right amount of technology is the minimum needed to solve the problem
- VIII. Technology should respect social norms
- Papers on Calm Technology
- Podcasts on Calm Technology
- Calm Tech Example Book Development
