🐛 Mail bugs, paper phones and the nature of technological change

Welcome to the Big Kid calm tech special

This week is all about calm tech; a design philosophy I was first introduced to by Amber Case 🙌

In other news, after 3 months, my job hunt journey has come to an end! This month I start my new role as a user researcher at CANVA and I couldn’t be more thrilled 🥳

If you’re also searching for a new job, I summarised my process and top tips in this job hunt field guide. I hope you find it useful 💖

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Mail bug. It got me thinking. 

This is the Mail Bug. 

A device who’s single use case is for writing, sending and receiving email. I love it and here’s why:

Every morning I wake up with a supercomputer next to me. As I roll over to turn my phone’s alarm off, I’m tempted to take a peek at my email and we’re off and running. Emails, Instagram, Texts. I’m awake.

My phone is a context switching, multi-tasking machine; comfortable doing 100 things at once…but am I?

Overall, humans are fairly excellent ‘multitaskers’. For example, when we drive, we’re parallel processing many ‘tasks’ at once; accelerate, clutch, turn the wheel, scan for pedestrians. As a learner each task requires a lot of conscious effort and attention, but with practice these tasks are automated. On the contrary, no matter how much I practice I’ll never be able to effectively watercolour paint and drive.

Research tells us that light to medium multitasking is actually 👌 It’s heavy multitasking and distractions that are costly (mainly for tasks that require sustained, focused attention and a high degree of accuracy). 

I love the mail bug because it does one thing at a time. When I’m on my computer, it’s all too easy to suddenly find myself heavily multitasking. The digital equivalent of trying to watercolour paint and drive.

I want to slow down. I want to be more like the mail bug.

To start, I bought an alarm clock to tease apart the ‘all in one’ nature of my devices, scheduled 2 emailing blocks per day and made a number of different ‘users’ on my computer so that I can create different OS environments. For a growing list of techniques I’m testing check out this Notion list. How do you drive your device- I’d love to know! Comment in Notion with some of your top tips!

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My favourite playful web picks for the month 

• Envelope by Special Projects Pop your phone into this paper envelope to transform it into a simpler, calmer device. One particular envelope only allows you to make and take calls on your phone. Imaaaaaagine.

• Lantern by Nord Projects Hacking an IKEA lamp with a Raspberry Pi, projector and accelerometer. The result is a lamp that can send you subtle, glanceable information through ambient light.

• Calm Tech Exercises Human-Centered Design activities by Amber Case focused on redesigning and reimagining everyday tools to be kinder and calmer.

• Alchemy Studies An iPhone that was ground up into fine dust and encased in a glass globe. It’s so entirely mesmerizing to see the iPhone so….still and quiet.

• Microsoft Inclusive Design guidelines Head to the module on ‘respecting attention’ for a series of questions to consider during the design process.

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Mute distracting notifications, grab a warm cuppa and find a seat in the sun. 

✨Five things we need to know about technological change ✨by Neil Postman

A frank look at the cost of technological change. Best paired with this quote from Susan Schneider (Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind):

“We walk on the moon, we harness the energy of the atom, yet racism, greed and violence are still commonplace. Our social development lags behind our technological prowess.”

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If you like this newsletter and found it’s content useful, share it with a friend you also think will like it! If you’re feeling particularly generous, consider buying me a virtual coffee 💖 This helps fund little experimental projects and software subscriptions.