Calm technology

Mark Weiser and John Seeley Brown of Xerox PARC wrote this article called Designing Calm Technology more than a decade ago. I found the distinction between "attending" and "attuning" to be interesting, as well as the notion that calm technology explicitly supports features in our periphery.

Designs that encalm and inform meet two human needs not usually met together. Information technology is more often the enemy of calm. Pagers, cellphones, newservices, the World-Wide-Web, email, TV, and radio bombard us frenetically. Can we really look to technology itself for a solution?

But some technology does lead to true calm and comfort. There is no less technology involved in a comfortable pair of shoes, in a fine writing pen, or in delivering the New York Times on a Sunday morning, than in a home PC. Why is one often enraging, the others frequently encalming? We believe the difference is in how they engage our attention. Calm technology engages both the center and the periphery of our attention, and in fact moves back and forth between the two. [...]

Where we place our attention is so important. It is something we have quite a lot of control over, and yet rarely account for explicitly. Encalming technology helps us by helping to manage our attention in supportive ways. What if this were an explicit design principle in all technology? We would live in a different (healthier and friendlier) world.