Taming Technology Through Design

(credit: homewithaneta.com)

We live in an ironic age where people and technology are so intertwined that I sometimes wonder if we really made the right decision to switch our eyes from all the excited and vast unknown around us to a black screen just a couple inches big. I was born in 1997, so I personally witnessed and lived through the divide. Growing up, I remembered all my best friends’ phone numbers so I could call them. A few months ago I was at a hospital filling out my emergency contacts and I was blanking on everyone’s cell — my mom, my dad, my best friends in the city, the guy that I’ve seen a couple times (not that I was planning to put him). I know that at a surface level it just shows that I have better things to remember, like my work stuff, events I’m going to, when does restaurant week in NYC start and end…?

Earlier this week I attended a wonderful talk hosted by betaworks exactly on this topic featuring Amber Case, a research fellow at the Institute For The Future and author of Calm Technology,. During the event we discussed the fundamental shift in the relationships between humanity and technology which inspired me to re-examine my interactions with technology every day. So here we go — a day in the life of Chialin: in the morning I wake up to SleepCycle, an app that tracks my movements and noises through my phone’s microphone when it wakes me up exactly at the end of a 90min sleep cycle which is scientifically proven to give me to better head start to the day. I then ask Siri to play some music while I get ready, and repeatedly question Siri “what time is it” and “what’s the weather like” as I bury myself in makeups and piles of clothes. My mirror scans my face and tells me which areas of my face need more hydration while adjusting the lighting for the weather so I can choose the best lip color for a sunny crispy winter day. I need to go to an event before I head into work, and my calendar is already synced with my map so it sends me an alarm reminding me to head out along with the best route options. On my back to work after the event I stop by a coffee shop and the barista mentions I can put in my phone number to collect points. I like the coffee enough to try it, but surprisingly gets an alert that I already have 500 points — apparently Stripes is taking a tab of all the merchants I’ve shopped with and probably knows every single order I’ve made. It’s now 1030AM, less than…