Our world is made of information that competes for our attention. What is needed? What is not? We cannot interact with our everyday
life in the same way we interact with a desktop computer. The terms calm computing and calm technology were coined in 1995 by PARC
Researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in reaction to the increasing complexities that information technologies were creating.
Calm technology describes a state of technological maturity where a user’s primary task is not computing, but being human. The idea
behind Calm Technology is to have smarter people, not things. Technology shouldn’t require all of our attention, just some of it,
and only when necessary.
How can our devices take advantage of location, proximity and haptics to help improve our lives
instead of get in the way? How can designers make apps “ambient” while respecting privacy and security? This talk will cover how to
use principles of Calm Technology to design the next generation of connected devices. We’ll look at notification styles, compressing
information into other senses, and designing for the least amount of cognitive overhead. Here's the Amazon link for the book:
Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design
Agnes Vasarhelyi (@vasarhelyia) is an iOS developer in love with open source. She likes to build up software from streams of values and automate things in the meantime. Her blog tells you about reactive programming and her tweets about organizing community events.
