Project Summary

Our challenge was to combine speculative design strategies and a
somatic approach to critical making in order to produce a speculative design project that engages with multiple somato-sensory experiences, such as the visual, auditory, haptic, and kinaesthetic experiences that humans encounter through the senses of sight, hearing, touch, and motion. The aim here is to consider the ways in which the human body shapes the user’s perception of their interaction with media technologies and digital interfaces.

Our Approach

Project Topic

Our project topic is a physical alarm clock that engages with the user's somatic senses, to which it assists with waking up the user through enhanced visual, auditory, and touch enhancements. While there are many users that are able to utilize the standard sound and haptics from the phone's alarm, those with certain disabilities face trouble in effectively using these features to wake up with their standard phone alarm. There may be those who are hard-of-hearing, deaf, blind, or have other-visual impairments that halt their ability to use their smartphone's alarm to its full capabilities. These individuals are then left struggling to hear their phones alarm in the morning.

Project Aim and Objectives

On the surface level, we want to create an attachment to effectively wake up the user with the least amount of hassle possible. First and foremost, we wanted to keep accessibility in mind while designing as we acknowledge that not everyone experiences things the same way.

 We will consider implementing a more haptic and visual approach opposed to just an auditory alarm. Using this approach, we would like to implement a system where we can monitor the sleep cycle of the user as to which there would be a window of when the user would like to wake up. We would catch them at the lightest sleep cycle and slowly wake them up by mimicking a slow sunrise effect with the use of light/LEDs and a haptic component using small bursts of vibration going from light vibration to heavy vibration until the user turns off the alarm. 

Initially when ideating, we wanted to come up with a phone case for our product but we came to the conclusion that there would be too many molds for different phone models and that people may have spent lots of money on phone cases that may be difficult to part ways with. 

We opted to create a stand alone device that can be used with all sorts of devices such as phones or tablets making it accessible for larger audiences and not tailored to specific devices. The goal of the device is to have something portable, transferable, and intuitive enough that setting up would be easy. We also implemented a companion app which will enhance the overall experience and to track the user's sleep patterns and schedule.

How the prototype features an electric component that engages with the user's somatic experiences (e.g., visual, auditory, haptic, and kinesthetic) through multiple human senses, such as sight, touch and motion.

After a brief discussion with our classmates after our first presentation, we learned that most students between their early to mid 20s have used different apps, techniques, devices to wake up which for the most part we will consider moving forward. We also received further insights about the physical alarm being embedded into a pillow or even an attachment to the user’s bed frame to amplify the sound & vibration. 

From an app perspective, we received a lot of helpful insight based on some of the applications our fellow peers have used and effective methods they used to wake up. For those who are deeper sleepers, they need numerous loud and aggressive techniques, for others they may require puzzles, patterns or different acts of movement such as shaking the device to wake them up or to be more alert. A pain point we discovered in our brief discussion was that after a short while of doing the same task, hearing the same sound, feeling the same vibration pattern you become numb to it and are more prone to hit snooze. To avoid this, we want to implement an option to use a randomized feature based on several of the user’s desired settings to keep things fresh and ensure our user is woken up effectively. We do not want to deviate too much from our current system in the calm and dynamic wake up we initially included but also possibly incorporate randomizing short tasks to wake up the user and the option to use loud and aggressive wake up tactics still considering sound, tactile and visual components.

Speculative connection” to the Internet of Things (IoT) i.e., hope the prototype could be connected to the internet by extension of the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT)

Without even knowing, we already included a connection aspect between our two products. They are designed with an “ecosystem” in mind. We loved Apple’s implementation of an ecosystem in a sense that they are all interconnected but also can be used individually as a standalone product. With that in mind, whether a user has one product or another or both, they still share the same goal of waking the user up. We initially thought of connecting through WiFi but we found that if users did not have access to it, in the case our user goes camping, having two devices would be useless. Bluetooth was the next best option as it is easily accessible and made the most sense as Bluetooth connection could be brought wherever.

How The Prototype Unfolded

For our Prototype the group met and began the ideation phase where we discussed issues we faced with the standard alarm clock app on our phones. All of us mentioned that we require a number of alarms to go off inorder to wake us up. A few of us said they like having their phone as close as possible to them while they sleep so they can feel the vibrations which will help them wake up.

Based on our own prior experiences we brainstormed ways in which we can enhance the alarm clock to wake us up more easily as well as utilizing ways in which we can make this product inclusive and accessible for as many people as possible. We decided on a stand alone device with an actuator to enhance vibrations, a speaker to enhance the sound and some LED lights around the attachment to help the user wake up. 

After the brainstorming step was completed we decided to create some low-fidelity sketches where each member from the group made a simple sketch of what they envisioned. After everyone completed their sketch we compared and explained our ideas where we incorporated ideas from the sketches to come up with a device we felt would be best suited. We built a prototype which we will now refine. We plan to showcase our devices features with the aid of the arduino where we will build the circuit and code it according to the features of our alarm clock.

Try out our fully clickable Prototype

How The Product Works

1. Connecting the alarm clock to a cellphone through Bluetooth.

2. First Setting, the alarm clock will sound at 6:30am with a dark light and a calm ring tone.

3. Second setting, the alarm clock will sound at 6:45am with a slightly brighter light and a more active ring tone, it will also engage the actuators so vibrations can be felt to help wake up the user.

4. Third setting, the alarm clock will sound at 7:00am with the brightest light and a more active ring tone, it will also engage the actuators so vibrations can be felt to help wake up the user.