When a connected device gets “better,” the default move is usually addition: a larger screen, another notification, an assistant, a subscription, then perhaps a button for turning off everything that was just added.

The Good Screens report starts with a more useful question: could a device improve by doing less?1

It's Nice That Insights collects examples of designers and studios making technology quieter, narrower in purpose, or more physical and expressive. The report deliberately puts opposite directions next to one another: unobtrusive or stimulating, minimal or flamboyant, highly capable or intentionally limited.1

This is not an independent study proving that everyone secretly wants to throw their smartphone into a lake. It is a trend report produced by It's Nice That's commercial research department to inspire creative teams. Read on those terms, it becomes more useful.

Doing less becomes a design decision again

The market naturally pulls the other way. It's Nice That cites Deloitte's estimate of roughly $1.3 trillion in global consumer-technology spending in 2025.12

That number says nothing by itself about whether our relationship with devices is healthy. It only shows the scale of an industry with strong incentives to create new categories and add new capabilities.

Good Screens points to projects such as Modem and HB-AS's Heirloom Hardware, and Kieran Feechan and Domenico Di Paolo's Imago.1 They do not share one visual style. What connects them is treating a device's behavior as a creative decision rather than a feature list to maximize.

For a designer, that distinction matters. You can improve an interface by adding a shortcut. You can also improve a product by removing the situation that made the shortcut necessary.

A screen is not always the best interface

The report's title sounds like an argument for better screens. Its examples open a broader question: how much of an interaction actually needs to be visual?

A device can respond through material, sound, light or gesture. It can also decide not to demand attention until it has something worth saying.

This sounds obvious, but digital products are routinely judged by what they can add and much less often by what they are disciplined enough to leave alone.

There is no universal recipe here. A screen is excellent when you need a map, an image editor or a dense comparison. Minimalism can become its own irritating marketing pose when useful functions are removed merely to make an object look virtuous.

Constraint can be voluntary again

The strongest idea in Good Screens is less “technology is bad” and more “maximum capability is not a design goal.”1

A dedicated device can do fewer things and protect a practice better. A deliberately slower interaction can prevent an accidental action. A device without a screen can force its designer to invent more tangible feedback.

Those are artificial constraints, but creators have used artificial constraints forever because they force decisions.

The smartphone spent fifteen years swallowing the camera, MP3 player, map, calculator, alarm clock and a good chunk of everything else. Good Screens at least reopens the reverse question: out of everything a device can now do, which parts are actually worth keeping?