Amber Case
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Articles by Amber Case
The worst problem with Claude and ChatGPT isn’t the apocalypse. It’s how we communicate with them.
By design, chatbots are exhausting -- but our interaction with them can be better designed While tech leaders and politicians debate the potential for large language models like Claude and ChapGPT to pose an existential risk, another important discussion needs to be had: Simply put, chatbots are exhausting. Cayce’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Inside the Very Human Origin of the Term “Artificial Intelligence”
With so much growing interest and fear around AI, it may be helpful to know some history around the term, how it came to be , and why it keeps getting buzzed about. Now 70 years old, “artificial intelligence” was actually first coined due to the most uniquely human of motives: Ego and competitiveness. It was in the Summer of 1955 in New England.
Breathing Room: Designing Work & Living Spaces for Quality Thinking and Decision-Making
Last year, I was in an all-day meeting in a new, multi-million dollar office building owned by one of the world’s top tech companies. Officially billed as a "corporate retreat”, I was helping the team brainstorm strategy directions for 2026. We started in a meeting room at 9 am, and as we headed into the late afternoon, our brainstorming turned more into a drizzle. I noticed our conversation slowed and meandered.
The Secret Psychology of Wainscoting
A wainscoting panel from the 1830s, block-printed artwork. Public domain image from the Smithsonian Design Museum Have you ever visited an old hotel or office building and were surprised by how cozy and timeless it felt, imparting a sense of gravity and calm?
When Swiping Replaces Scissors: How Touchscreens Are Stealing Childhood - And How We Can Bring It Back
Zoom image will be displayed The history of technology is full of innovators who got their start creating with their hands. Steve Jobs cites a calligraphy class at Reed College as influencing the design of the Mac; Susan Kare, who designed the Apple icons we still use today, had a childhood immersed in arts, crafts, and embroidery.
¿Pin de IA el próximo gran dispositivo? Diseño estaría condenado
Una de las preguntas más frecuentes que recibo últimamente de ejecutivos es si el pin de Inteligencia Artificial (IA) se convertirá en el próximo gran dispositivo tecnológico. Después de todo, tras la reciente adquisición por parte de OpenAI de Io Products, la firma de diseño de hardware de IA dirigida por el legendario exdiseñador de Apple, Jony Ive, parece que pronto veremos la próxima gran interfaz: un dispositivo de IA del tamaño de un pin de solapa, activado por voz, sucesor del smartphone.
Is the AI pin the future of technology?
Amber Case|Published 9 minutes ago One of the most frequent questions I’ve been getting from business execs lately is whether theAIpin will become the next great tech device. After all, with OpenAIrecently finalising its acquisitionof Io Products, the AI hardware design firm led by legendary former Apple designer Jony Ive, it looks like we’ll soon seethe next great interface: a voice-activated, lapel-pin-size AI device that’s a successor to the smartphone.
The problems with XR headsets that even Apple can’t fix
Tech companies have been trying to make VR/AR/XR headsets go mainstream for over three decades. Here’s what I’ve discovered in my own research of the technology. In 2016, I ran an experiment to see how long shifts in VR might affect my perception of time and attention. I spent 4–8 hour days in VR over the next few months, playing as many games as I could.
The Invisible Light That’s Harming Our Health - And How We Can Light Things Better
I recently spent a few weeks running a conference for a community of researchers and writers in a historic chateau in the French countryside. During this time, I also examined the history of the building and how texture, size and proportionality affected thinking in the space. This experience turned out to be a perfect illustration of how some modern lighting choices can disrupt our experiences in places as beautiful as this.
The Missing Manual: Safety Engineering for Organizations Using LLMs
It’s now been exactly 70 years since the term “artificial intelligence” was coined. AI first joined the technical vocabulary 1955, primarily as a marketing term to distinguish the technology from cybernetics. While countless applications of AI exist, LLMs offer some interesting advances — if they’re designed to amplify what’s best about human intelligence.
Calm Tech Gift Guide
Amber Case · Follow 6 min read · -- With the launch of Calm Tech Certified™ and the holiday shopping season here, I’m excited to share this directory of great products and devices that prioritize customer well-being. Some were selected in the Calm Tech Institute’s first certification process, while others are from my own personal shopping cart. All of them are designed along principles of Calm Technology to respect our attention while reducing stress and cognitive load.
10 tech gifts to help lower loved ones' stress levels
With the holiday shopping season approaching, many of us are thinking about buying the latest, most cutting-edge tech gadgets for our loved ones. I’d suggest another direction: Shopping for devices that help reduce stress and cognitive load. Let me explain what I mean. Think about how much of our technology is designed not to be calm. Your car probably has a touchscreen on the dashboard—even though it’s incredibly dangerous and stressful to use while driving.
Announcing Calm Tech Certified™ and the First Class of Certified Products
Amber Case · Follow 5 min read · -- I’m excited to announce that the Calm Tech Institute (CTI) just announced the launch of Calm Tech Certified™, a certification program designed to help companies create products that prioritize customer well-being by reducing their stress and cognitive load. Calm Tech Certified™ is the world’s first standard for attention and technology.
Amplifying AI Efficiency with Human Empathy
When customer service systems are poorly planned, people can get trapped in automation loops. This results in experience for customers that feel like, in the words of Harlan Ellison, "I have no mouth, but I must scream". While renewed interest in AI has driven extreme excitement around applying artificial intelligence to everything, the more practical applications which would dramatically enhance our everyday lives right now are often overlooked.
Our "Smart" Devices Still Have a Blue Light Problem
I recently spent the night at a friend's house. With gorgeous throw rugs and tasteful wall art, he had done everything possible to create a perfectly inviting, cozy space. Unfortunately, the toilet had other plans. An expensive new "smart" appliance, the bidet toilet boasted the latest comfort and sanitation features. But as I discovered when using it in the middle of the night, it also has a piercingly bright blue light that shouted into my eyeballs when I opened it.
Designing Tech That (Finally) Respects Our Time & Humanity
I'm very excited to announce the launch of the Calm Tech Institute, a new design organization creating standards for technology which respect our time, attention, and humanity. Our goal with the Calm Tech Institute is to completely change what we expect from technology. We want everyone asking of every high tech product: Does it demand more of our attention than is needed? Does it become "pass-through" when we use it, so that we can focus only on the task, not the tool?
Why We Need a Future Where Technology is Calm
Meet me at CES 2024! I’m helping launch the latest product from mui Lab, an award-winning creator of home devices based on Calm Technology principles. I’ve been advising them on Calm Technology for the last few years. Look for mui at Tech West, Venetian Exhibit Suites, Floor 29, Suite 29–219, or connect with me on LinkedIn to arrange a time to chat.
How small Memos can make large organizational changes
Amber Case is author of Calm Technology and a Research Director at the Metagovernance Project. A frequent design consultant across many industries, she was previously a fellow at MIT’s Center for Civic Media and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. When you’re working deep within a large organization, it may seem impossible to effect change.
Embracing Formal Rituals For Stronger Ideas and Connections
I just spent a summer studying with a group of students at a small college at Cambridge University. There are 31 distinct colleges at Cambridge University, each with their own dining hall, chapel and student housing. Many of these are ancient - in that their dining halls are hundreds of years old - many without electricity. The college grounds of my small school were stunning. They were right on the river Cam, which runs through the middle of Cambridge, England.
Sit, Siri! Designing Our Tech to Have Good Etiquette
Sometimes we need to tell our devices what to do. Illustration by the author. If you're lucky, you awake in the morning to an overeager puppy who bounds onto your bed with happy yelps and kisses. It's a pretty welcome start to the day, even when the bounding starts while you're still half-asleep. Most of us, however, begin our morning with a completely different kind of barking. Technology has exploded into our lives like a needy pet, demanding our constant attention from the moment we wake.
Inside the Very Human Origin of the Term "Artificial Intelligence"
With so much growing interest and fear around AI, it may be helpful to know some history around the term, how it came to be - and why it keeps getting buzzed about. Now nearly 70 years old, "artificial intelligence" was actually first coined due to the most uniquely human of motives: Ego and competitiveness. Back row, from left to right: Oliver Selfridge, Nathaniel Rochester, Marvin Minsky, and John McCarthy. Frontrow, from left to right: Ray Solomonoff, Peter M. Milner, and Claude Shannon.
What It Means to Design Technology That's "Pass-Through"
Windows are the ultimate pass-through technologies. The best example of a technology interface is one you rarely notice - even if it's powerfully enhancing your reading experience of these words right now. I'm referring, of course, to glass windows. We rarely notice them or even think of them as technology; when we use them, the window's physical components are not even something we physically see (unless the glass itself is notably dirty).
How to Identify "Truthy" Tech Trends
Telling Alexa to tell a branded sink to dispense a robotic-amount of water in Amazon's Smart Home of the Future. Image credit: Do you remember Amazon's Connected Homes? Only a few years ago, the tech giant touted it as the latest in "smart home" technology - where, for example, you could easily bring your cup to the kitchen, and ask Alexa to fill it. In a video promo, that feature looked pretty cool.
UIs of the future, proportional design systems, embracing UX research
Weekly curated resources for designers - thinkers and makers. "At a fundamental level, all design is governance. We encounter inconveniences every day, both offline and in the apps we use. But it's not enough to say it's the result of bad design. It's also a result of governance decisions made on behalf of the customers during the design process." How design is governance → By Amber Case
How Design is Governance
I’m writing this post from a brand new coffee shop in a busy area of Los Angeles. It seems like it is opening day, or soon after. From a distance, the seating and tables look charming, and the setting is well-lit by a large picture window at the entrance. It’s clearly designed with the intention of being an inviting place for people to meet up or hang out on their laptops doing work. The problem is that the coffee shop looks great as long as you don’t try to actually use it.
Why We Need to Know Cybernetics // Part II - Resilient Product Design
Product Design & Automation Systems Read Part 1 here In the first post of this series, we conducted a short survey of cybernetics, explaining the theory’s importance to understanding how systems shape everything around us, from personal health to disruptions of the global economy. For this post, let’s look at how cybernetics relates to product design.
Why We Need to Know Cybernetics // Part I
Why We Need to Know Cybernetics // Part I Consider your body right now as you read this post. Are you keeping track of all of the processes in it that keep your heart beating and your temperature at around 98.6F/37C? When we live our lives, play with kids, go to work, exercise, and go about our daily activities, we rarely think about them at all. This is because our entire body self-regulates, with systems and subsystems that rarely veer out of a normal range.
Calm Tech Products Featured Across CES 2023 - Including mui Lab’s Calm Sleeping Space!
If you’re at CES 2023, I hope you stop by Venetian Expo Level 2, Booth #50027 for a demo of Calm Sleeping Space from mui Lab, a Kyoto-based startup that I am very honored to advise. The company is built on Calm Tech principles; their team even worked with a Japanese publisher to release a translated version of Calm Technologyavailable in stores. Originally an award-winning Kickstarter project, mui Lab won a CES Innovation Award in both 2019 and 2022.
Browsers Reimagined
Browsers are the lens through which we see the web. And considering how much the content of the web has changed over the past few decades — from low-quality images to constant streaming video — it sometimes feels a little strange that the browser experience has remained more or less the same. How might browsers change in the next five years? While there’s no way to definitively predict the course of the future, Here are a few ideas of some ways the web could continue to evolve in the near future.
como a IA vai facilitar exploração do espaço
Os primeiros trabalhos para o desenvolvimento da inteligência artificial tiveram origem no pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial, nos EUA. Hoje, são inúmeras as possibilidades que essa tecnologia vem nos proporcionando. No campo espacial, a inteligência artificial pode facilitar a vida dos astronautas, ampliar e agilizar descobertas. Ainda não existe um robô que possa trabalhar ao lado (ou no lugar) dos astronautas durante as missões no espaço, mas as pesquisas para chegar a isso estão fervilhando por aí.
Did You Know These 10 Facts About the History of Groundhog Day?
Adobe Stock | Photo by SerikBaib Learn more about Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil, the infamous groundhog weather forecaster who determines how long winter will last. Meteorologists have had it rough in the Hudson Valley (we’re talking about you, topsy-turvy temperatures), but perhaps instead of looking to the skies for their forecasts, they should follow the lead of one furry fellow in Pennsylvania and keep their eyes on the ground.
Signals Versus Trends: Why we saw little real innovation at CES
Speaking about “Designing Human Technology” at CES’ WPP Terrace with Cleve Gibbon, CTO of Wunderman Thompson (Photo by Vanessa Camones) This was my first year speaking at CES, the 100,000+ attendee strong technology trade show in Las Vegas earlier this month. I spent three days visiting companies on the trade show floor, at invite-only press events, and in hotel rooms.
Why Sci-Fi Is Bad for Design
Tech that looks cool in the movies is often distracting and frustrating for real users Amazon’s Home of the Future consists mostly of voice-activated parlor tricks. Photos courtesy of the author. Science fiction visions, especially as presented in movies and television shows, have infected our approach to UX and product design. They have nudged us to mistake visualizations that were created for maximum dramatic appeal for solutions that are feasible and desirable, especially over the long term.
When Technology Fails, Who’s Responsible?
We’re creating new technologies without giving thought to the danger they could cause if they fail Credit: Wikimedia Commons Electricity is such an integral part of our everyday lives, we hardly even think of it as a technology. There’s a very good reason for that: Decades of careful regulation and planning across many industries and levels of government have worked together to make electricity pervasive, rarely prone to outage, and as safe as humanly possible.
My iPhone accidentally dialed Apple’s emergency service; here’s what happened…
Photo credit: Gadget Hacks Last weekend I vowed to take a complete break from work, and instead got a hands-on demonstration of problematic UX design. I was having a great dinner with friends at a remote restaurant in the Oregon countryside. My phone was stored away in the purse of my friend. I thought it was off. There would be no checking the phone today! Suddenly a waitress walked up to our table. “Are you Amber Case?” she asked. My party looked at me.
Why Tech’s Favorite Color is Making Us All Miserable
Source Image: Activedia/Pixabay. When I was 14, I saved up money from my first web design job to trick out a really nice gaming PC. I outfitted my computer with tons of blue LED fans, and I kept it on at night, right next to my bed. Shortly after, I realized my sleep patterns were changing. While I wasn’t staying awake any later, it now took me longer to get to sleep. Was I eating differently? Was it just a part of being a teenager? Was it the light in my room?
Designing Our Way Out of Non-Places
Unused space in Santiago, Chile airport I’m recently back from a creative sabbatical, which began in Japan after giving a talk on UX principles to some young designers. It’s been a relief to take a temporary hiatus from my usual speaking schedule. I love discussing design with global audiences, but ironically, that requires enduring an unsolved problem of our urban user experience: The ubiquity of non-places.
No More Shiny Tomorrows: Futurism Needs to Get Real
Productivity Future Vision Microsoft, 2011. No matter the setting, shiny futurist scenarios are often the same: Perfect people in perfect settings, using tech that never fails. The world seemingly becomes more perfect with the addition of expensive, battery-intensive, and visually complex technology. While these fantasies might seem benign, I believe their narratives are corroding the way we develop the future by distorting our perceptions of how we think the future will actually be implemented.
The new frontier of UX is sound – Amber Case – Medium
Read more about it here I just spent three years writing a new book explaining how sound design is critical to the success of products, environments, and experiences. When we devote so much attention to a product’s look and feel, we can easily miss the importance that audio — good and bad — can have on its overall experience. Designing with Sound brings insight from over 40 engineers, designers and scientists to an emerging landscape of sensory opportunities.
I’m Joining the Institute for the Future as a Research Fellow!
Read IFTF’s announcement here Just a quick note before the holidays: I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve joined the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto as a Research Fellow! IFTF is a unique non-profit with a 50 year history of creating practical foresight for a world undergoing rapid change. The Institute utilizes a core research staff, creative design studio, and a range of affiliates to bring a diversity of perspectives and experiences to difficult problems and new ideas.
Is Your Product Designed to Be Calm? – Amber Case – Medium
By Amber Case Since I started speaking about calm technology and designing with attention, designers and developers often ask me if a particular product they’re helping create is calm — i.e. designed to seamlessly, unobtrusively integrate with person’s life and daily habits. “Facebook Messenger how to turn off notifications” is such a popular search requests, it returns 21,100 results, including this WikiHow guide We deal with non-calm products every day.
Sound design and the future of experience
Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist and user experience designer from Portland, Oregon. She studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. She is the co-founder and former CEO of Geoloqi, a location-based software company acquired by Esri in 2012.
Collaborators, Not Colonizers: Designing a Future for AI & Automation That We Can Live With
How will artificial intelligence and automation change the way we live and work? One of the promises of technology in general was to make us more human, taking some of the tedium out of our lives, and giving us more free time. The Greeks had two words for time: Chronos, or industrial time; the time of a scheduled meeting, our “alarm clock” time. The other type of time, Karios, describes a kind of time outside of time — watching a sunset, hanging out with family, falling in love.
Why the Color of Technology Must Change
When I was 14, I saved up money from my first web design job to trick out a really nice gaming PC. I outfitted my computer with tons of blue LED fans, and I kept it on at night, right next to my bed. Shortly after, I realized my sleep patterns were changing. While I wasn't staying awake any later, it now took me longer to get to sleep. Was I eating differently? Was it just a part of being a teenager? Was it the light in my room? But the orange light from my 80s era alarm clock wasn't keeping me up.
Why the Color of Technology Must Change – Amber Case – Medium
When I was 14, I saved up money from my first web design job to trick out a really nice gaming PC. I outfitted my computer with tons of blue LED fans, and I kept it on at night, right next to my bed. Shortly after, I realized my sleep patterns were changing. While I wasn’t staying awake any later, it now took me longer to get to sleep. Was I eating differently? Was it just a part of being a teenager? Was it the light in my room? But the orange light from my 80s era alarm clock wasn’t keeping me up.
The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens
In 2012 I tried out a brand new luxury vehicle at a automotive conference. It was a minimalist European model, and nothing seemed out of place — until I tried to use the in-car entertainment system. The whole thing was a monolithic rectangle of reflective, flat glass. The touchscreen software was bizarre and clunky. It took me five steps to pair my phone to the car, and I had to devote all my attention to the display just to figure it out.
How calm technology amplifies humanness
Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist and user experience designer from Portland, Oregon. She studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. She is the co-founder and former CEO of Geoloqi, a location-based software company acquired by Esri in 2012.
How to Reclaim Your Relationship with Tech: Tools & Tips
When “we are all cyborgs” debuted in 2010, smartphones were barely mass market and social media was a fraction of its current size. Less than 10 years later, we’re already suffering from the excessive demands that technology makes on our lives. The locus of our attention has shifted to the little black boxes in our hands, while the real world faded into the periphery.
The problems with Facebook are inherent in its design, but that can change
The problems with Facebook are inherent in its design, but that can change The latest controversies of social networks Facebook and Twitter are easily the most heated in their entire 12-14 year history — not just because of their suspect role in enabling interference in the 2016 election, but because by now, nearly all of us are users. If history is any guide, however, this outrage likely won’t last.
How Facebook Can Better Fight Fake News: Make Money Off the People Who Promote It
How Facebook Can Better Fight Fake News: Make Money Off the People Who Promote It Facebook and other platforms are still struggling to combat the spread of misleading or deceptive “news” items promoted on social networks.
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