Calm Tech Café
Designing technology that serves humans
Dates
How can we build technology that truly improves human life without draining our focus, privacy, or well-being?
The idea of calm technology was introduced more than 30 years ago, yet it has never been more relevant. Today’s digital products are often designed to capture attention at any cost, driven by ad-based business models, data tracking, and persuasive design patterns like infinite scrolling. The result? Technology that exhausts us, undermines healthy relationships, and challenges democratic values.
As the EU’s Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager once put it: “Technology should serve humans, not the other way around.” But what does that actually look like in practice?
A new generation of products is pointing in a different direction. Companies like reMarkable show that it’s possible to build successful businesses around focus, simplicity, and human-centred design, rather than addiction and distraction. Still, many questions remain: What makes these products work? What trade-offs are required? And how can more founders, designers, and researchers follow suit?
This meetup series brings together researchers, founders, and industry practitioners to explore how technology can better align with human values. Through concrete examples, open discussion, and shared experience, we’ll dig into what humane technology looks like and how to build it.
Whether you’re building products, shaping policy, or simply curious about the future of tech, this series is for anyone who believes we can, and must, do better.
Event organizers: Forskningsparken, SINTEF, Startuplab.
Speakers
Smartphone overuse is taking over our focus, our relationships, our society, our concentration, our minds. "But you can just put your phone away until you need it." Can you really? With Skrin, perhaps the answer is actually yes. Talk by Martin Rydving, prototype developer/research assistant
Børge Strand-Bergesen, CTO
Finn Myrstad, fagdirektør
The difference between an annoying technology and one that is helpful is how it engages our attention. Technology shouldn’t require all of our attention, just some of it, and only when necessary. Calm Technology is a framework for designing ubiquitous devices that engage our attention in an appropriate manner. The idea behind Calm Technology is to have smarter people, not things, to engage with attention in the periphery, and to bring tactility back buttons and interfaces, instead of just touchscreens. How can we design technology that becomes a part of a user’s life and not a distraction from it? This speech will cover how to use the Principles of Calm Technology™ to design the next generation of connected devices. We’ll look at notification styles, compressing information into other senses, and designing for the least amount of cognitive overhead. Amber Case is an internationally recognized design advocate and speaker. She is the author of four books, including Calm Technology and A Kids Book About Technology.
Todays’ Norwegian Primary and Secondary Schools rely heavily on iPad. It is not clear that access to such colourful and fun devices create a good learning environment. In this talk, we outline an alternative: A dedicated low-cost and low-colour device specifically designed for coding and robotics skills. The talk will showcase an early prototype, discuss the connection between hardware capabilities and learning outcomes, and take a look at the potential market and competition. The project in still in the early phase, and is an exploratory and joint effort initiated by the Norwegian Steiner/Waldorf Schools, Montessori Schools and SINTEF” Presenters: Vemund Sætre Skuleberg (Waldorf/Steiner), Nina Johansen (Montessori Norway) and Tobias Dahl (SINTEF).
The difference between an annoying technology and one that is helpful is how it engages our attention. Technology shouldn’t require all of our attention, just some of it, and only when necessary. Calm Technology is a framework for designing ubiquitous devices that engage our attention in an appropriate manner. The idea behind Calm Technology is to have smarter people, not things, to engage with attention in the periphery, and to bring tactility back buttons and interfaces, instead of just touchscreens. How can we design technology that becomes a part of a user’s life and not a distraction from it? This speech will cover how to use the Principles of Calm Technology™ to design the next generation of connected devices. We’ll look at notification styles, compressing information into other senses, and designing for the least amount of cognitive overhead. Amber Case is an internationally recognized design advocate and speaker. She is the author of four books, including Calm Technology and A Kids Book About Technology.
Thomas Ramberg
Thomas Daykin Johansen, CEO JunoMobil
Audun Sanderud
Tobias Dahl, Senior Researcher at SINTEF Digital and Founder of Elliptic Labs
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