Calm Technology ─ Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design

How can we use technology as tools instead of letting our technology use us? This practical book explores the concept of calm technology, a method for smoothly capturing the user’s attention only when necessary, while calmly remaining in the user’s periphery most of the time. You’ll learn how to design products that work well, launch well, are easy to support, easy to use, and don’t get in the way of a user’s life.

Old systems and bad interfaces will plague us if we don’t learn how to design for the long term. By writing code that’s small instead of large, and making simple systems rather than complex ones, we can begin to design technology that gets out of our way.

• Discover principles that follow the human lifestyle and environment in mind, allowing technology to amplify humanness instead of taking it away
• Delve into types of alerts, product launch, "calming" technology, and tech that smoothly enters people’s lives
• Learn from a trained anthropologist and a technology hobbyist who sits on the edge between technology and how people use it

This book is ideal for anyone who actively builds or makes decisions about technology, including user experience designers, product designers, managers, creative directors, and developers.

Amber Case studies the symbiotic interactions between humans and machines — and considers how our values and culture are being shaped by living lives increasingly mediated by high technology.

Case’s 2010 TED talk on technology and the new version of homo sapiens has over 1.2 million views; she keynoted SXSW in 2012 and speaks regularly at conferences and workshops all over the world. Previously, she was the CEO of and co-founder of Geoloqi, a location-based software company acquired by Esri in 2012.

That year she was named one of National Geographic’s Emerging Explorers and made Inc Magazine’s 30 under 30. Case is an advocate of privacy, data ownership and calm technology.

Dubbed a “digital philosopher,” by Fast Company magazine, she is the author of An Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology. Case lives and works in Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic or at caseorganic.com.