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

Calm Technology

• 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