“How you design the beep is important.” Behind the movement for calmer gadgets

Summary

Unpluq's keychain and app. Credit: Unpluq Unpluq's keychain and app. Credit: Unpluq In order for a gadget to be Calm Tech-certified, it's scored against an 81-point criteria across six categories as shown below: One of the hardest categories for companies to adhere to, Case said, is periphery, which may rely on a product including physical buttons, which also touches on the materials category. With headphones, for example, users shouldn't have to look at the product or memorize where the buttons are to control it. "Just put a series of raised dots: a raised dot for the down volume, two dots for the up volume, and then an obvious power button. … With the flattening of everything, we've forgotten this," she said. The other top challenge for companies is light, which includes examining lights' color-rendering index and prioritizing low flickering and warm colors. "Blue light's a really, really energetic spectrum, and so it keeps us up at night,” Case said, pointing to the benefits of alternatives, like E-ink. Overall, the criteria forces companies to think about product design in a way that has become less common among modern gadgets and deeply considers products' impact on the human senses. “How you design the beep is important," Case said. A new type of certification Offering a new and voluntary type of certification program, the Calm Tech Institute is challenged to drum up interest in its program and financial security. As some tech companies already have to pay associated costs for more essential certifications, such as UL and Bluetooth certification, Calm Tech doesn't directly charge for certifications. Instead, companies can pay Calm Tech for a review to see if their product is likely to get certified. A company could also pay for a pre-certification, where Calm Tech looks at a product before it's launched and helps with ideation so that the product ends up certifiable. Calm Tech is currently reviewing eight products for certification and has three products in th...