Welcome to a six post series on the Calm Tech Institute’s certification standards! In today’s post, we’ll focus a topic that is difficult to focus on, but very meaningful: Peripheral Attention
Anyone who’s checked into a hotel after a long business trip knows how painful a poorly designed hospitality experience can be.
After a recent 10 hour flight, I land, jet lagged, and finally get to my hotel room. All I want to do is sleep. As is often the case, however, the room’s television is on, blaring out the hotel chain’s internal channel. It’s noisy, bright, and the thing I need the least of right now. It’s taking up all of my attention, but I have to focus on powering it off.
The problem is that the television remote isn’t immediately visible, and there’s no manual on/off button on the front of the TV.
My next two equally unpleasant options are to search the room for the remote, or figure out how to power it off by hand. The problem is that the button on the television is not immediately discernable when I try to find it on the back of the TV.
I then need to turn on the flashlight of my phone (a super bright, annoying light) so I can go on a spelunking mission to find the manual button in the dark recesses of the TV’s backside.
What’s missing in this hotel room design is an awareness of cognitive ergonomics, a discipline which first emerged in the 1970s (making it a predecessor of Calm Technology) which integrated recent findings in cognitive psychology and early artificial intelligence. Simply put in this context, cognitive ergonomics measures how much attention an object takes to use, and whether it’s comfortable to use.
From a Calm Technology perspective, what’s missing is a focus on peripheral attention –- i.e., designing for the minimum awareness required to engage a technology.
A design preference for physical interfaces may seem outdated, especially on high tech products. I’ve heard stories from manufacturers that removing physical buttons makes it less expensive to create the products, but even then, a simple raised dot on a smooth interface can make a big difference. Including physical buttons and raised dots for tactile navigation actually amplifies the amazing sensory awareness of hands and fingertips.
The Peripheral Awareness of Hands
Our hands possess an extraordinary capacity for peripheral information processing that rivals and in many ways surpasses our visual system.
While touch may not process more raw information than vision, it does provide unique and crucial information about our environment. Each fingertip contains thousands of mechanoreceptors of different types, each specializing in detecting specific kinds of tactile information.
These receptors work together to process multiple streams of information simultaneously, all while operating below the threshold of conscious attention. Designs that utilize touch can allow for action that don't need to be focused on directly.
The sophistication of this kind of tactile processing becomes further evident when we consider how much information our hands can process simultaneously. For example, our hands constantly read subtle variations in steering wheel resistance, road and wind conditions -- all while this information remains in our peripheral awareness until something requires our attention.
Modern interface design often fails to utilize this rich tactile processing capability. Flat touchscreens and buttonless interfaces eliminate the texture, resistance, and positional feedback that our hands are equipped to process. This forces users to rely more heavily on visual attention, creating additional cognitive load and reducing our ability to operate devices peripherally.
Sometimes More, Not Less, Creates Calm
Understanding the importance of elevating peripheral attention helps us address one of the common “gotchas” of Calm Technologies.
It's easy to think Calm Technologies are the high tech equivalent of an empty room with a yoga ball, but often the opposite is true.
More information can often be calming, if it leverages peripheral attention.
A crowded jet airplane cockpit bristling with controls and indicators might not look calm at first glance, but to a pilot, having all the information needed at a single glance is incredibly reassuring. It’s similar to how a well-designed car will has all the information needed for driving in within a quick look–and (ideally) physical buttons for adjusting adjust radio volume, temperature, and windshield wipers while keeping eyes on the road.
As for the manufacturer of my hotel TV, the solution is simple—putting a slightly raised button on the back of the television with a tactile dot would make it findable without the need to turn on a light and search for it visually.
Amber Case is the founder of the Calm Tech Institute. Her goal is to help companies design products and environments that work with human attention, instead of against it. Do you have a product that you’re interested in getting feedback on? Get in touch!
Read the rest of this series:
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