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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Calm tech certification "rewards" less distracting tech
sakesun wrote 30 min ago:
Emacs is my calm tech IDE.
username135 wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
I wish wearable tech was dumb. I dont want to connect it to my phone,
to an app, to the internet.... _nothing_
Its hard to find these kinds of devices but i have to believe there's a
market. I can't be the only one.
TylerE wrote 5 hours 0 min ago:
The only thing Iâd want:
Has no Blue LEDs: Pass
Has a Blue LED: Fail
Edit: Honorable mention for text boxes that silently eat newlines.
Kuraj wrote 3 hours 45 min ago:
How about any LEDs?
Having to use duct tape to prevent an appliance from lighting up my
entire room at night is egregious.
TylerE wrote 21 min ago:
I could be convinced but the old school dull green's I don't find
objectionable at all. Nor the similarly dim warm orangey reds of
the same era.
The blue ones are just so much brighter, and many of them seem to
have a flicker, too.
bmicraft wrote 52 min ago:
I could settle for a switch at the bottom to disable all lights,
and in return the manufacturer is allowed to add as many as they
like
philip-b wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
My list of calm (+), somewhat calm (o), and non-calm (-) pieces of
technology that I have owned:
+ kindle from 2010
- laptop
- phone
- Ipad (but it's still much calmer than my computer or my phone)
+ Harmonica (musical instrument)
o Amplifier (I use it with my harmonica through a mic)
- Linnstrument (musical instrument that requires computer or ipad
connection)
+ Pencil and paper
+ Paper books
o Handwritten notes on Ipad
- Notes in obsidian
o Nintendo Switch
+ Paper dictionary (for language learning)
- Dictionary + Claude AI on my phone
CatWChainsaw wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
If it doesn't make as money as addition tech it will lose.
metalman wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
less distracting, less distracting, less distracting than what?, oh !
oh! I know this one
its called lowering the bar, all the way, from where a device or a
technology does something that saves you time and effort, to where it
costs you time and attention from the things you need to do, but thats
ok.
where is a ludite with a big wrench
GuB-42 wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
I don't really understand what it is about. The general idea is be less
distracting, but that's pretty vague, a lot of things are not
distracting, in fact most things aren't, we just don't notice and
that's the point.
The criteria seem to be "attention, periphery, durability, light,
sound, and materials". Very broad. It looks like it even addresses
openness and repairability with "an instruction booklet with a list of
replacements and compatible parts", something I really care about, but
how does it relate to calm?
Maybe it will be clearer when the certification document is out.
lifeisstillgood wrote 6 hours 45 min ago:
My son just had an X-ray and there were checks and balances and careful
professionals. Itâs taken a hundred years plus to go from early tech
to available in local hospitals.
We have barely begun to address the sharp edges of social media,
mobiles and more. We will get there, a calm UI and backgrounded tech
(hint AI wonât do it magically we need to intentionally give up
selling ads every second) but democracy helps.
nixpulvis wrote 6 hours 54 min ago:
The irony of trying to read this article and being assaulted by cookie
warnings and ad popups that appear while scrolling is not lost on me.
choilive wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
You know whats calm and not distracting? A notebook and pen. You can
buy a LOT of decent notebooks for the price of one of the reMarkables
mentioned in the article. (~30 or so?), and it will last a lot longer
as well. Im starting to sound like a luddite.
girvo wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
My paper notebooks can't do linking, I can't easily rearrange pages,
rearrange my notes on the page, and getting it off my paper and into
my work PC is more challenging. My Kindle Scribe is excellent for all
of this, and I can't go back, personally!
dredmorbius wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
There are of course pen-and-paper approaches to all of these.
Links in text are called references. These can be internal within
a document or codex, or external, referencing third-party works.
Either case is far less subject to linkrot than URLs have turned
out to be.
One of the killer concepts of a bullet journal is the use of
indices and spreads to provide an interlinked and searchable
reference. If you go back in time, there are numerous journal and
commonplace book organisational schemes.
Pages can be easily rearranged using a removeable binding
(three-ring binder or various other options), or by using an
unbound format such as index cards (the original database
solution).
Data can be entered into a computer through scanning and
handwriting recognition, though this is admittedly slow,
cumbersome, and inexact. On the other hand, you may want friction
between your paper-based and electronic data systems.
notatoad wrote 1 hour 54 min ago:
>I can't easily rearrange pages, rearrange my notes on the page
okay. so don't do those things.
for me, that's what "calm tech" is all about - it's not just
notifications and distractions, it's all the desire for more
features, and for software to solve all problems. sometimes we can
just not have features, and keep some problems, instead of trading
our problems for the problems that more features bring.
ryanianian wrote 6 hours 58 min ago:
I get you're being snarky, but I'll politely push back.
I remained skeptical for a long time. Then I got one. I absolutely
love it. In particular, the ability to have multiple notebooks with
me and cross-linking via tags. And "infinite pages" lets you insert
space in the middle of a page or continue moving down without having
to worry about physical page sizes. I can also screen-share the
tablet with the desktop app to draw diagrams on zoom calls.
Admittedly, it is only incremental over a spiral notebook and a bic
pen. But they do that incremental thing pretty well, particularly
because of their focus on the "calm tech" aspects and lack of
mainstream ecosystem to track upstream.
malfist wrote 6 hours 46 min ago:
I had the opposite experience. I am an avid note taker, love the
idea of a remarkable and got one for all the benefits you
mentioned, especially the screen share part and just found it
unsatisfying. Couldn't stick with it, wound up sending it back and
going back to pen and paper
golly_ned wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
With the usual trade-offs between pen and notebook: namely durability
and storage, for me. Some can account for all their notebooks going
back years. I cannot, which makes me sad to have lost a lot of
writing.
CapeTheory wrote 6 hours 40 min ago:
I have observed a strange/alarming behaviour when I carry a
notebook - because friends and family don't typically have one,
they find it intriguing and so will sometimes absentmindedly snoop
through what I've written if I leave it unattended. The same thing
just doesn't happen with a ReMarkable (and even if it did, you can
set a PIN code).
girvo wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
> and so will sometimes absentmindedly snoop through what I've
written if I leave it unattended
I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced that! Such a
fascinating experience, though really quite upsetting at the
time. Doesn't happen now with my PIN-locked e-ink device.
kibwen wrote 7 hours 4 min ago:
> Im starting to sound like a luddite.
Obligatory mention that the Luddites weren't against technology in
general, they were against technology that was causing them to lose
their livelihoods (while the country was already in the midst of an
employment crisis and economic downturn due to a trade war (and real
war) with Napoleon's Europe).
brianmaurer wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
Coincidentally there's an app on the front page that is an open-source
and free for the Unpluq product mentioned in the Calm certification:
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42782295
dang wrote 8 hours 20 min ago:
Related. Others?
Calm Technology - [1] - Nov 2021 (68 comments)
Calm Technology - [2] - Dec 2019 (155 comments)
Principles of Calm Technology - [3] - Aug 2016 (66 comments)
Calm Technology - [4] - Feb 2015 (1 comment)
Calm Tech, Then and Now - [5] - Oct 2014 (1 comment)
Designing Calm Technology (1995) - [6] - July 2014 (2 comments)
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29115653
URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799736
URI [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12389344
URI [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9107526
URI [5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8475764
URI [6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7976258
constantcrying wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
Very interesting initiative. I think examining products on that level
is very important.
What I think is also important though are tools which can embrace this
and work with existing technology. The modern smartphone is
simultaneously a great tool and an enormous distraction. There exist no
device which offers the tools I genuinely need without all of the
distractions.
TulliusCicero wrote 8 hours 24 min ago:
Agreed, had a bunch of talks about this issue with the wife.
On one hand, we're both distractible people, and it'd probably be
better if we could leave our phones behind on certain family outings
and trips.
But on the other hand, there's definitely times where you really need
your phone on said outings: for directions, for business info, to
call people, to book things, etc. It's just hard to get the
necessities without bringing along everything else.
everyone wrote 8 hours 44 min ago:
I mean that mui Board thing is pretty cool and novel, that would
definitely distract me for a while.
pedalpete wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
We're building a neuromodulation sleep headband, and we've always had
the aim of getting to the point where the user puts it on, it does it's
thing (slow-wave enhancement) the person takes it off in the morning
and goes about their day.
I don't even want to put IO into the device at all. Not only because it
increases cost and size, but because I don't what the user having to
interact. We have to find better ways to fit the device in your life,
so you don't even think about it.
ranger207 wrote 1 hour 18 min ago:
I'm a little worried, in your example, that there might be some
configuration required that could be frustrating without a way to do
it on the device.
For example, I helped someone transfer their stuff from their old
iPhone to their new one a few years ago. The way you're supposed to
do it is touch your old iPhone to the new one and it'll just work.
Needless to say, it didn't. I think it was about an hour of rebooting
the old and new ones before it finally caught. Since there weren't
any logs or settings to change or any way at all to influence the
process it was more frustrating than magic.
Now, it's possible your product really is as simple as turning it on
and it'll just work, in the same way a lamp is "turn on and it
works", but if there's any configuration at all that the device does,
please expose it to the users. Human brains are incredible at finding
patterns, generally better than computers, and if there's a mismatch
between the human's model of how something works and the device's
model, it's best to allow the human to change the device's model
adhoc_slime wrote 7 hours 30 min ago:
Do you get many people thinking this product is snakeoil?
bongodongobob wrote 3 hours 57 min ago:
I can only hope so.
bodge5000 wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
I was working on a similar IO problem with wearables a while ago
(though by the sounds of things, far less seriously than you are),
and I had the idea that maybe that band/strap could function as an
on-off switch, so when you undo the band (which you do when taking it
off), it turns the device off, and vice versa. Could be something you
could try too
jazzyjackson wrote 4 hours 17 min ago:
This is a fun material you could use to detect if a band was
stretched or not, silver coated elastic [0], near 0 ohm resistance
when loose, resistance increases when stretched. I built a voltage
divider with a patch of it when I was experimenting with fabric
input devices, mostly just noise makers, but you can see how
responsive it is [1] [0] [1]
URI [1]: https://lessemf.com/product/stretch-conductive-fabric/
URI [2]: https://youtu.be/Xjo4w4OiBS8
mystified5016 wrote 6 hours 42 min ago:
I'm putting capactive sensors in my wearables to turn them on when
in contact with a human.
I strongly believe that the class of widget I'm building should
stay firmly out of the user's way. The point is to forget it's
there. So, as simple IO as possible.
0_____0 wrote 8 hours 8 min ago:
I love tech like this. You put it on and it just does its thing. My
HR monitor is like that, although if the receiving device doesn't
immediately pair, it can be frustrating figuring out what's gone
wrong.
polishdude20 wrote 8 hours 43 min ago:
Woah can you tell us more about this? Seems like really cool tech
endofreach wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
Need to try it here, dorry for OT:
Does anyone know investors in europe looking to fund something a little
moonshotty? What i've been working on is fundamentally "calm" at it's
core, yet more advanced tech.
Happy for any input (don't think VC is the route to go).
motohagiography wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
working on some product ideas now, finding that any code or set of
interactions you can abstract up into an analog control loop is both
calm and powerful.
if you have a system where you can dynamically dial resources up and
down to find an optimal output, that's a high value system. I think
understanding this balance is how aesthetic properties translate into
value.
gagik_co wrote 9 hours 32 min ago:
I mean right now just seems to be one of those business that one pays
to put a logo of a nice green checkmark or a tree to make your product
seem more legit and ethical
Sure itâs nice to push bunch of nice UI patterns but I imagine most
of the âcertifiedâ products werenât going to be attention hogs
anyways. A positive outcome from something like this would be if
governments started requiring these kind of certifications like they do
for accessibility.
umutisik wrote 10 hours 3 min ago:
Tablets and phones could be calm tech too if they adjusted their
brightness and white-point correctly based on ambient lighting.
malfist wrote 6 hours 43 min ago:
Calm tech isn't about nit levels. It's about how much the tech
inserts itself into your attention.
sdflhasjd wrote 9 hours 3 min ago:
My previous phone had a scheduled "night time mood" which put the
display into greyscale. Without this there's an intensity to the
screen that reducing the brightness doesn't fix.
jazzyjackson wrote 9 hours 40 min ago:
I thought an interesting move for the next Light Phone is to dedicate
an entire knob to screen brightness [0], although they indicate it
will be user programmable too.
URI [1]: https://www.thelightphone.com/blog/light-iii-design-manifest...
yapyap wrote 9 hours 54 min ago:
I doubt those are the uncalming aspects of tablets and phones, sure
theyâre what keep you up at night on a physical level but not
mentally.
hammock wrote 9 hours 50 min ago:
+ Greyscale + some kind of refresh rate limiter to 1-2Hz instead of
60-120hz :)
9021007 wrote 9 hours 48 min ago:
Sounds like youâre describing an e-ink phone, which is actually
a real product!
hammock wrote 7 hours 27 min ago:
Yes. Or a smartphone with these settings (doesn't require you
to spend $$)
localghost3000 wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
> Companies designing new products were unclear on what was right, or
wrong, and uncertain about how they might put calm technology ideals
into practice.
Nope. Thatâs not at all what the problem is. The problem is that when
you implement features that respect the users attention an engagement
metric dips slightly. And a shot caller notices. They roll the feature
back. Because at the end of the day your calm means fuck all to the
pursuit of endless growth.
agumonkey wrote 10 hours 44 min ago:
I can't stop thinking that we're circling back to how "tech" was before
when it was limited because it fits our needs better. Slower, some
complexity, less possibilities at every time.
jazzyjackson wrote 10 hours 23 min ago:
Yes I think the smartphone is an instance of "Your scientists were so
preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think
if they should.", when tech had higher constraints there was more
thought put into determining what was essential.
When I want to put on headphones to do chores around the house I pick
up my 2006-era iPod. No wireless pairing to screw with, no
distracting notifications, just a library of music I've already
listened to a hundred times so I can just think, which of these
albums am I in the mood for, and choose. The interface is simple to
navigate because there's just not much to navigate, and IMO that goes
a long way to have a predictable experience that never introduces
frustration.
constantcrying wrote 8 hours 16 min ago:
But the universality of phones also made them great tools. Maps,
calls, messages all can be enormously beneficial.
The problem comes when they are both a tool and an entertainment
device, as they are inseparably linked together.
kentm wrote 6 hours 8 min ago:
Even removing entertainment wouldnât solve the problem because
these devices have been engineered to be ad delivery platforms.
You would have to ban advertising on the device.
agumonkey wrote 7 hours 58 min ago:
I think the universality hides the fact that these are not really
made to stay in the flow of life but to be cute and shiny in
themselves, capturing your attention instead of being the
shortest path on providing what you need to keep going. Then
there's the instability of platform (plethora of messaging
apps..), the usual ad infestation (google maps now shows a lot of
local shop whether you asked for it or not) etc etc. Old devices
had to be tailored and became a side element in your life.
mhh__ wrote 8 hours 35 min ago:
In the west I guess there's some truth to that but I think phones
have been emancipatory in the poorer parts of the world.
agumonkey wrote 8 hours 38 min ago:
The irony is that, the iphone era was somehow everything I wanted
to see. But indeed this unified (incredible) device, ends up being
a sink in itself that sucks so much of your thoughts to provide
very few on average (there's some fun stuff given by having a
pocket computer to be fair).
jazzyjackson wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
For me the tipping point was when I could no longer FTP files to
my android phone. Not much of a computer IMO !
jf wrote 10 hours 51 min ago:
I wasn't able to find a full list of all Calm Tech certified devices,
but it looks like the union of these two URLs lists most of what they
have certified: [1]
URI [1]: https://www.calmtech.institute/calm-tech-certification
URI [2]: https://www.calmtech.institute/blog/tags/calm-tech-certified
Animats wrote 3 hours 31 min ago:
Looking at the full list of certified devices:
- AirThing View Plus: "This is placeholder text. To change this
content, double-click on the element and click Change Content."
Supposedly this has seven sensors, but only displays two values. How
does that work? The values are displayed as numbers, too. A bar chart
with green, yellow, and red sections would "calmer"
- Daylight Computer - Placeholder text again. No specs. What does it
actually do? Writing only? Web browsing? Dark grey on off-white text,
which looks like low-end E-Ink.
- Time Timer - looks fine, although everybody else's timers count
down counterclockwise. How much does it cost? If it's $10, great If
it's $100, come on.
- Unplug - if you need that, you have other problems.
This is disappointing. It's like the junk that used to be advertised
in the magazines that were provided in airline seat backs. These are
all non-problems or easy hits. They need something more useful, such
as a more usable TV remote or home control unit or car infotainment
system. Those all run from bad to worse.
I've run into "simple interface" people a few times. One was a guy
who was plugging his book about how clever their design for a
seat-back entertainment system was. He had a model of four typical
users and how they'd use it to pick from a rather short list of
alternatives.
I'd already read the book. I said, why not just have a channel
selector knob? Then it comes out that the thing had a payment
interface for pay per view. That wasn't mentioned when they were
explaining how simple it was.
A few years ago, there was someone who wanted to build a GUI for some
common Linux tool to promote their design shop. I suggested tackling
Git, which really needs a GUI. That was too hard.
This goes way back. In the 1930s, there was a thing for radios with
One Knob. Here's a 1950s TV ad for that.[1] There was a long period
during which radios and TVs had a large number of knobs to be
adjusted to get decent results. That was finally overcome.
My favorite simple interface is General Railway Signal's NX
system.[1] This is the first "intelligent user interface", from 1936.
What makes it "intelligent" is that, when a train is entering the
interlocking, the dispatcher selects the incoming track, and then all
the possible exit points light up. They pick the desired exit and
push its button. The system then sets up the route, setting the
signals and switches. Conflicts with other routes are detected, so
this is safe. If there are alternate routes, NX can route around
other trains. The previous technology was that the dispatcher had to
figure out which switches and signals to set themselves. There was
interlocking to prevent hazardous setups, but the lever machines
couldn't plan a route.
This kind of UX design is really important and usually botched.
URI [1]: https://anyflip.com/lbes/vczg
jbm wrote 8 hours 15 min ago:
I own that timer, or an Aliexpress knockoff there-of. It is great
and helps my kids with their homework.
The daylight computer looked interesting too; but its website
undermines the message it seems to give. I wanted a price and to
order and could do neither, but there were long paragraphs about how
revolutionary it was, with left to right and up-to-down transitions.
remoquete wrote 11 hours 13 min ago:
Amber Case's book on Calm Technology and design was a great read.
Perhaps as a consequence of having studied Cognitive Science, I find
this one to be the best book Iâve read on feature design â and not
just for software.
It's full of easily digestible insights on attention and context, with
excellent examples and clear explanations. Itâs almost philosophical
in its apparent simplicity.
eikenberry wrote 10 hours 4 min ago:
What were some of these insights?
remoquete wrote 9 hours 57 min ago:
The most important is that tech must stay at the periphery of the
user's attention. Of course one cannot apply this to Candy Crush...
abeppu wrote 11 hours 46 min ago:
> requires an instruction booklet with a list of replacements and
compatible parts
I appreciate this but it doesn't seem like it belongs in a
certification about calmness per se. Even annoying tech should be clear
about the extent to which parts are replaceable.
jazzyjackson wrote 10 hours 39 min ago:
Think of calm as the opposite of surprised. As in, wow I'm surprised
this computer has a proprietary soldered on SSD I can't replace! I am
no longer calm!
gjsman-1000 wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
This is the danger with certifications: Making the certification too
broad, causes very few things to be certified. Very few things being
certified, means nobody knows why the certification matters.
In my mind, repairability, "calmness," accessibility - it's all
separate.
Minor49er wrote 12 hours 1 min ago:
I was trying to read the article about less-distracting tech, but I was
distracted by a "create an account" popup that covered the screen while
doing so
cesarvarela wrote 11 hours 25 min ago:
And the cookies banner and the related stories column...
DIR <- back to front page