With Calm UX, we design digital products that respect users’ attention and support them in their tasks. We identify where information, interruptions or unclear processes create mental effort and develop solutions that provide guidance and make decisions easier.
The approach draws on the principles of Calm Technology. We focus on when a system needs attention and which activities can remain in the background. This helps us determine how to communicate information, provide feedback and make automated processes understandable and controllable.
The approach is useful when people perform complex tasks, use several systems at once or face frequent notifications and requests for input. For AI-powered applications, Calm UX also helps define how automated support and human decision-making work together.
Typical questions include:
Calm UX is particularly useful when developing or improving complex professional applications, connected products and digital assistants. It can also be applied during early concept development to establish how a product should handle users’ attention.
Together, we establish who uses the product, which tasks matter most and under what conditions people use it. We consider time pressure, competing tasks and differences in users’ abilities.
We define how improvements will be assessed—for example, through fewer interruptions, less need to check system activity or lower perceived workload.
We analyse typical workflows and observe where users need to search, wait, double-check or intervene. This includes reviewing notifications, information hierarchies, system feedback and automated decisions.
We assess whether the attention required matches the importance and urgency of each situation. We also examine where missing feedback creates uncertainty.
Based on our findings, we develop specific improvements. These may include notifications tailored to urgency, grouped information, clear status indicators or readily available controls for intervention.
We design how information moves into the foreground or remains available in the background, depending on the situation. Important signals must remain reliably noticeable. Scenarios and prototypes make the proposed solutions tangible.
We evaluate the proposed solutions with users through realistic tasks and scenarios. We examine whether people notice relevant information, understand processes and experience fewer unnecessary interruptions or checks.
We turn the findings into prioritised recommendations and identify which changes should move forward into implementation.
You receive a clear assessment of how your product uses people’s attention, along with practical approaches to reducing mental effort. Depending on your objectives, the results include:
This gives your team a sound basis for decisions that reduce mental effort and make the product more understandable and reliable to use.