Introducing Designing with Sound from O’Reilly Books (Oct 2018)

I’m excited to announce that sound designer Aaron Day and I have joined forces to produce a book on sound design for products called Designing With Sound. Why write a book about sound? Sound is part of everyday life, but it is often overlooked. Sound can make or break an experience, but we don’t think about it enough. There are many opportunities for brands and makers to consider sound as a crucial part of experience design. In this book, we explore sound from a number of perspectives, from the buzz of a phone, the distraction of an open office, architectural acoustics, sound and health, and the unexplored opportunities of employing more senses in our lives.

I released Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design in Fall of 2015. Since then, I was approached by a number of different companies looking for ways for products to fit better into a user’s soundscape. I realized that sound was just one part of the equation for experience design, but it deserved a much closer look.

That’s why I was so excited when my colleague Aaron Day asked me what to do with his 18 years of experience designing sound for brands, retail electronics, films, environments, automobiles, healthcare and museums. I told him that I was running into the same kinds of questions. There were designers, product owners and developers out there that needed answers to questions for a new class of connected products. How can we make products that work alongside us, instead of against us? How can we improve the sonic environment? First, we realized we needed to show people how sound affected them, how they could fix it, and then how they could make it better. The outline of a book quickly formed, and we pitched it to O’Reilly. O’Reilly was excited because it’s difficult to find a book that introduced more advanced sound design concepts without getting too technical. This world doesn’t need perfect sound, it just needs “better” sound, and through case studies, patterns and principles, we aim to show you how!

Designing with Sound will hit the shelves Oct 2018. Until then, you’re free to pro-order them. I’ll be starting to speak about various aspects of sound design starting May 2017 at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam.

Thanks so much for your support and feedback while we work on this book! It’s been great to be able to reach out to so many people already with their stories and relationship with sound. See you in October!

Designing Products with Sound: Principles and Patterns for Mixed Environments

Order from Amazon | Order from O’Reilly

By Amber Case and Aaron Day. O’Reilly Books, October 2018 (est.). 300 pages.

Sound is one of the most commonly overlooked components in product design, even though it’s often the first way people interact with many products. When designers don’t pay enough attention sound elements, customers are frequently left with annoying and interruptive results. This practical book covers several methods that product designers and managers can use to improve everyday interactions through an understanding and application of sound design.

• Understand the place of sound in design, and how it can make a difference in your product

• Learn key concepts in sound design, with patterns and principles you can use to improve user experience

• Learn how to integrate sound design into a project

• Use exercises to help evaluate sound design

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CyborgCamp is Back! Join us in Portland, Oregon on November 3rd, 2018!

CyborgCamp is back! Last held at MIT Media Lab in 2014, CyborgCamp is returning to Portland, Oregon this November at the Pacific Northwest College of Art!

We’d like to thank the 12 local speakers and performers helping bring CyborgCamp to life!

1. Stephanie Mendoza, VR art, development and activism (morning speaker) 2. Shashi Jain, 3D printing (morning speaker) 3. Reese Bowes, experimental DJing, sound design, and percussion (pre-party performance) 4. Erin Cooper, experimental music (pre-party performance) 5. Myles de Bastion, deaf musician and interaction designer (morning speaker and performer) 6. Deborah Heath, Anthropology professor, cyborg anthropology midwife, biodynamic food researcher (morning speaker) 7. Dave Moiser, artist 3D scanning (pre-party and CyborgCamp daytime 3D scanning) 8. Jeff Brown, food activist, robotic growing enthusiast, restaurateur, food sponsor (morning speaker) 9. Body Shame, solo experimental music performer (pre-party performer) 10. Amber Case, CyborgCamp founder, cyborg anthropologist and author of Calm Technology (morning speaker) 11. EddyEddyEddy, experimental music duo (pre-party performance) 12. Klint Finley, writer, journalist, and game designer (morning speaker)

On the fence about going? There are still a few tickets left! Can’t go? Consider sponsoring low income attendees by buying a couple of tickets! The cost is only $20, and you’ll be helping someone out!

What’s a CyborgCamp? CyborgCamps are small, in-depth unconferences about the future of the relationship between humans and technology. Attendees discuss a variety of topics such as the futures of identity, privacy, surveillance, hardware to wetware, drones, 3D printing, cyberpunk, human augmentation, constructed reality, the second self, ethics, robot rights, sexuality, urban design, and anthropology. Topics are discussed the morning of the conference and scheduled into the conference grid by attendees themselves, making it a DIY conference experience.

What’s an Unconference? An unconference is a conference organized by the attendees on the day of the event. Although CyborgCamp will have some morning speeches to kick off the day’s events, most of the day will be made up by talks and breakout sessions organized by attendees. The unconference model allows one to really determine what they’re interested in learning, instead of being tied to a very stringent conference agenda. Each CyborgCamp has its own mix of topics created by what the attendees want to discuss. All CyborgCamps follow a Code of Conduct.

CyborgCamps are Small CyborgCamps generally have less than 100 attendees, making it easier to have more in depth discussions with people across different fields. The small format increases the chances getting to really know your fellow attendees.

CyborgCamps are Diverse Every CyborgCamp welcome people from different backgrounds, including social, business, academic and trade-related. Just as cyborg studies sit at the crossroads of multiple academic disciplines, we like to invite people at the crossroads of different disciplines and boundaries as well.

CyborgCamps are Designed by Attendees At CyborgCamp, attendees make the conference. Some attendees come prepared with ideas of what they want to talk about, and others come to listen and learn. Some attendees have relevant experience and prepared talks, and others just have a woolly idea needing discussion. At the start of the conference, attendees write their ideas up on a board and the conference begins!

How can I attend? Clear your calendar for November 3rd, 2018 and register for CyborgCamp here!

The conference will be held at PNCA on Saturday, November 3rd, 2018 from 9am-6pm. On November, 2nd, we’ll have a pre-party with live tech performances, 3D scanning and other treats from 7-10pm at a secret, undisclosed location. Anyone interested in making a post-conference zine is welcome to join the CyborgCamp writing party on Sunday, November 4th!

Get your ticket! CyborgCamp has always been an affordable conference. We use sponsor funds and a low ticket price to provide meals, entertainment and unconference sessions to everyone who attends. Tickets are $20 to encourage people of multiple backgrounds, especially students. If you’d like to help sponsor the conference, simply buy a bundle of tickets, and we’ll use the funds to provide scholarships to those who can’t afford the ticket price. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cyborgcamp-2018-tickets-50544840980

Website Feel free to visit CyborgCamp to learn more! We’ll be announcing a full lineup of morning speakers and performances soon. Tickets usually sell out, so get yours asap! http://cyborgcamp.com

Sponsorships We’re looking for a handful of sponsors to provide sign language, closed captioning, and other accessibility support for the conference. The best thing about sponsoring? It’s tax deductible! Please contact caseorganic at gmail dot com with any inquiries! You’ll get a small sponsor packet and a non-profit donation instructions!

From Esri to Calm Tech: My Next Steps

Today I’d like to announce that I’m moving on from my position as Director of Esri’s R&D Center in Portland, Oregon, and transitioning to several new projects I’m very excited to share.

It’s been an amazing two and a half years at Esri. I worked with an incredible team, and I’m going to miss everyone very much. Many of us came from Geoloqi, a company I co-founded in 2010 that was acquired by Esri in 2012. We were privileged to then work on a series of challenging projects that reached over 5 million users. We built out a new version of the Geoloqi technology called the Esri Geotrigger Service, allowing more features and scaling for many more devices and use cases. Along the way, we also created a number of popular open source technologies, and spearheaded the effort for Esri to use Github. I have tremendous respect for Esri, and I’m confident the projects we started with them are in very good hands.

The Need for Calm Technology

Working at Esri helped me realize something important: Location is just one aspect of the information we need to make sense of things. And as people get increasingly overwhelmed by tech, they find it negatively impacts their life, getting in the way of doing great things. In the coming decades, it’s my hope — and passion — that we’ll develop more and better apps that use feedback loops to help people regain their mindfulness, and sense of focus. Call it “perspective as a service”. These concepts are not new – they take their cue from cybernetics, using data to give people a sense of their own perspective.

With that, I’m proud to announce that I’m writing a book for O’Reilly: Calm Technology: Designing interfaces for the next generation of things. Calm Technology is a perspective on the future of design. We can’t design the world the same way we would a desktop. Calm Technology is about designing technology that respects people and works with their lives, instead of introducing more abstractions. Good technology is invisible. With that in mind, I also started a website, calmtechnology.com, to help explain some of the concepts I’ll expand on in the book.

Which takes me to another announcement:

Applying Calm Technology to the Next Generation of Healthcare

In 2012 I hosted a biennial conference called CyborgCamp in Portland, Oregon, an “unconference” on the future of humans and technology. Last year, we held the conference at MIT’s Media Lab, where I met Chris Dancy, who showed me data from 600 devices he was tracking, all going into Google Calendar. He was able to modify his behavior in a positive way with this “perspective as a service”. Three years later, Dancy is applying the same methods to the wellness industry.

In addition to writing and speaking this year, I’ll be joining Chris Dancy to build out this platform as part of a new initiative at a company called Healthways. I’ll remain in Oregon while building out a Portland branch of the company. We’ve given our devices many senses, but we need to create a feedback loop to have those senses help us.

Upcoming Talks I’ll be speaking about Calm Technology internally at the Institute for the Future on March 19th, 2015 and at Craft Conference in Budapest, Hungary on April 23rd, 2015.

Stay in touch! I’ll be posting updates at @caseorganic and @calmtechbook, and I hope you follow me there. You can always reach out to me via e-mail: case at caseorganic dot com. For writing and speaking opportunities, please ping my business manager and advisor Vanessa Camones: vanessa at themixagency dot com.

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