"Calm Technology?" These two words sound like an oxymoron; how could technology ever be anything but anxiety-inducing? As Case establishes in book of the same title, the current state of humanity's fraught relationship with technology doesn't have to be this way; user experience design offers a way out.

Calm Tech begins with a few observations about human physiology and human culture from the perspective of information theory: we have a continuum of attention, moving from primary, such as the center of our field of vision, to secondary, such as some auditory signals, to tertiary, such as a gentle nudge. Most modern technology has focused on dominating primary attention, and yet this is at odds with ends that reach beyond these objects. When a painter is painting, their attention is with the image and emotion they're depicting on the canvas—not with the paint brush. When a formula one driver is on the track, their attention is on how the vehicle is moving through constrained space at high speed—not on the steering wheel/dashboard. In both instances, you might say the instrument—paint brush, car—becomes an extension of the operator. So why do we have phones that are constantly in the center of our field of vision, and start glowing and dinging and buzzing as soon as we move them out of the center of our attention?

Well, the cynical study of surveillance capitalism would come back with the cliché, "you're the product, not the user." This is a point worth taking—phone design also caters to advertisers and data miners, not just consumers. But there is a boundless world of other power dynamics and other business models to explore, and many products are at the center of your attention not due to the their exploitative architecture, but due to the ineptitude of their design processes to integrate the principles of calm technology. That's where this book comes in.

To come back to information theory: one of the core principles of calm tech is that technology should only provide the user with the minimum amount of information necessary at any given time. Many technologies miss this mark by a few order of magnitudes. To take some auditory examples: the subway screeching on the tracks that gives you a headache and drowns out all but a conversation comprised of yelling represents a failure in design. The subway is providing you with so much unnecessary information it is like being engulfed in a storm at sea. Or recall the last time you were in an "efficient building;" every room is buzzing with the sound of the Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) to circulate air. Any calm moment is pervaded not by calm, but by an incessant whirring noise, like you're in some kind of industrial setting. Again—this is a failure of the principle that technology should provide you with the minimum amount of information necessary; white noise is not useful information.

To take a look at another example: I drive a Mercedes and it has an intuitive locking system. It comes with a key that works through a combination of proximity and touch. When you have the key in your pocket, you can unlock the door from outside the car by placing your hand within the handle (as though you were going to open it). To lock the car, you touch the outside of the handle (slightly less unintuitive, although aligned with the directionality of closing the door). Rather than fumbling with a key each time you need to lock or unlock your door, you simple touch the handle in the way you might if locking and unlocking were not a factor. But what if the key runs out of batteries? It contains within it a traditional metal key, which can be used in the old-fashioned way. This comes back to Case's principle, "technology should work even when it fails."

One lens through which we can look at calm tech is brain hemisphere science. In Iain McGilchrist's book, "The Matter With Things," he describes the way in which the left hemisphere of our brain has a concentrated attention, and the right hemisphere of our brain has a soft attention. In many animals, one way to think of it is that the left hemisphere is focused on finding food, and the right hemisphere is focused on avoiding predation. To come back to calm tech—in the book, McGilchrist cites the Isle of Man TT motorcycle race. When digital gauges were first introduced, many racers "upgraded" to the new technology. And yet within a few years, almost everyone had switched back to analogue. Why? A digital display requires a two-fold process: first the operator must consider the numbers, and then next they must interpret the numbers with in a range. For example, if you're presented with the number "200" for an oil temperature, you must then summon the appropriate oil range to mind, and ask yourself, "is this a normal value, high, or low?" But with an analogue gauge, all of that information is at hand in an instant, sometimes with a glance, and sometimes just with a soft gaze that doesn't even require looking at the gauge. The orientation of the needle is inherently relational, instantly displaying not only the value (which is inconsequential), but where it falls within the limits of too low and too high (say, three fifth of the way to the red line). Analog gauges are a wonderful example of providing the minimum amount of information necessary—which in this case, also means providing the operator with the context for their interpretation. To summarize from a hemispheric perspective: digital readouts utilize the left hemisphere, when analog readouts utilize the right hemisphere. And for split-second decisions, the right hemisphere is vastly superior.

Another lens we can use is that of interiority and exteriority. In the preface, Case notes that much current technology, "stands against us and outside of us." She goes on to say about the inherent potential of technology, "we designed it as an extension of ourselves." The former analogy epitomizes of a view of exteriority—comparison, distance, fragmentation. The latter epitomizes interiority—oneness, gestalt, integrity. All things have an interior and an exterior. Whereas many conventional design processes focus on the exterior, "what will this make the user do?" calm tech focuses on the interior, "how will the user feel?"

Why does all of this matter? On page 28 Case observes, “one of the hallmarks of poorly designed systems is that they force the human user to act like a machine in order to successfully complete a task.” But humans aren't machines. When articulating the principles of calm tech, Case proclaims that technology should "amplify humanness." As living systems, humans are fundamentally different than machines. In a world where algorithms are pushing everyone towards the mean like some kind of quality control procedure on an assembly line, calm tech flips this relationship on its head: technology in service to humanness, not humanity feeding a world-eating machine.

In conclusion, if you make things that humans interact with, this book will support you to hone your ability to design in ways that elevate humanness, not degrade it. For a book on technology published almost a decade ago, it has matured rather than degraded. Case's observations on technology have proved oracular. The calm tech approach is more important than ever. ( )