Feedback gratefully welcomed!

I spent a few hours yesterday playing on paper with some ideas. Having gone through the survey and looked through academic literature on alarm clocks, I've a set of basic requirements. There's nothing particularly earth-shattering here, in fact they're quite dull:

1. The product will be an alarm clock application for the iPhone;
2. Its primary purpose will be to ensure that owners get up in the mornings, at the time they want to;
   1. To support this it will help them set their alarm accurately;
   2. It will also help owners remember to set it in the first place;
   3. It will allow owners to set a repeating alarm;
3. Its secondary purpose will be to assist its owners in ensuring they get into good sleep habits: enough sleep nightly, without needing to catch up at weekends.

I've identified some principles I'd like the product to embody. I'll list these out first, then explain them in more detail with some illustrative sketches:

• "Stroking, not poking";
• Promote mindfulness, rather than dictating;
• Make use of context;
• Presume grogginess;
• Sound is 50% of UI;

I'd love to hear any feedback you have on these, the sketches below or the process; part of the reason I'm posting about this project is to try and replicate the routine of regular presentation and constructive criticism that I've read Pixar have in place. I'm doubly interested if you work day-to-day as a professional designer.

"Stroking, not poking"

Throughout lectures this term, Graham repeatedly brought us back to the idea of emotion in UI, throughout lectures this term, and I have a half-baked theory which relates this to touch user interfaces.

Nass and Reeves show in The Media Equation that "individuals' interactions with computers, televisions and new media are fundamentally social and natural, just like interactions in real life". The same gestures that we use to talk to our touch-screen devices came from our flea-picking monkey-pasts. It seems reasonable to suggest that gestures which ApeMe associates with positive things, like grooming, will engender a more positive emotional response than gestures which ApeMe associates with negative things: like poking. (How often do you poke those you love in real life?)

This is pop science at its worst, I appreciate, and I've been looking around for papers which might confirm or disprove it, without success (anyone know of any?). But in the absence of evidence, I'm going to go with it anyway and see if it works for me.

What this means is that I want the UI of the clock to use languid, flowing gestures throughout most of its use - and stabbing, pokey gestures in places where either (a) the user is feeling negative towards the clock (like, when waking up and trying to turn it off), or (b) as punctuation at the end of an activity: a kind of gestural full-stop.

So, the app uses a large clock-face as its primary UI, and a mental model of multiple clocks laid out horizontally to allow for multiple alarms. On starting the app (bottom right), the user is welcomed and asked to drag down a new clock from just off the top of the screen, at which point (top left) they can set an alarm by dragging a finger around the dial. Perhaps the rate of movement of the alarm hand would vary depending on how close to the centre of the dial their finger is - I'd need to play with that. The only poking motion is the button to turn on the alarm: so the setting-ritual is a sequence of sweeps and a final stab.

To move between clocks, the user drags the whole screen left and right (see top right), to get rid of an alarm they flick it up and off-screen, back where it came from (mid left), and to add an alarm they scroll to the right and drag a new clock down (bottom left).

There's a big assumption here: that I will be using an analogue clock face. Every mobile clock I've seen so far uses a digital display, which makes me suspicious there's something I'm missing here. I know that 76% of survey respondents keep their mobile within arms reach or closer at night, and it should be possible to create a display which is visible enough at that distance, but still…


Promote mindfulness, rather than dictating

A secondary aim of this project is to make an alarm clock which helps its owner get the right amount of sleep. I've chosen to do this in a quiet fashion: rather than, say, alerting the user when it's time to go to bed (which might play towards the "alarm clock as tyrant" analogy which surfaced in a couple of papers: Wensveen 2000 and Zimmerman 2009), providing a simple, almost-background visualisation of how much sleep they've had, as measured by the difference between the time of going to bed, and the time they get up.

I'm making the assumption I can measure the former through a combination of signals: what time the alarm is set (many being set as part of the bedtime ritual), when ambient light levels change downwards significantly (using an on-phone light sensor), and when the phone is still (using accelerometer). There may be other signals I could use too.

I've looked at a few different ways of showing your recent sleep history: I'm thinking that yesterday, last week, and last month are the time-frames to look at. The first of these will provide most motivation to fix the "just-broken" (i.e. catch up now on last night); the last two give a longer-term perspective. Good habits over a month could imply the user is in a decent routine. Good habits over a week are worth measuring because they'll provide a bridge between short term and long term measurement: they give the clock a way of rewarding its owner for a few good days.

Visualisations could be done lots of ways - from the generated silhouette-landscape of Dream (mid right) and psychedelic Rainbow (top right) to more boring Bar charts (centre) or just sticking the figures on-screen (Say, bottom left). I suspect that I'll end up going with Say or Bar for the purposes of this project: (a) because the end-result of this will be a mid-fi prototype and not much more and (b) because my graphic design skills are ropey if not non-existent.

Another point at which it's useful to show how much sleep you'll likely get is during the setting of the alarm. Different people say they need different amounts of sleep (respondents to the survey ranged between 4.5 and 10 hours) too, and having a way to configure this in a direct-manipulation fashion without a settings screen would be nice. I hate settings screens, they're a purgatory for decisions that no-one could make.

So: when setting an alarm, show a shaded area to indicate when you ought to go to bed to get your full 8 hours, or whatever (top left): even if you can't get enough today because you're setting your alarm late at night, it'll provide some impetus to sort things out tomorrow. And to say "I need less sleep than that", let the user use two fingers to drag this window smaller (top right).

Finally, after setting the alarm tell the user how much sleep they're going to get (bottom left). This has a double-function: it's an opportunity to congratulate or criticise a sleeping habit, and double-checks that the user isn't setting their alarm to PM when they meant AM, or vice versa.


Make use of context

This is a slightly woollier one: I was looking at a few different things here - mainly the Stuff Outside The Phone - and at this point I started playing with faces: clocks have faces, after all, and if we want to build a positive emotional association with a device it's easy to hate, why not make it more human?

So if it's a person not a thing, perhaps he should notice when the lights go out and visibly go to sleep (top right), or smile when you pick him up (top, middle), or be sad when he didn't manage to wake you - perhaps by being totally ignored or snoozed too many times (bottom right)?

Using a gesture to interact with the clock might be useful, particularly when 50% of the use of the clock will be when its owner is in a groggy state, prone and struggling to focus their eyes - so using the device itself to silence or snooze an alarm might be appropriate (bottom right).

I also started playing with a social idea, but I think it might have taken me towards shoehorning too much into the product. If we know when you've gone to bed, we could tell a server (top, middle). And if a server knows when lots of people have gone to sleep, it could tell all those phones (top right), which could start displaying something quiet and ambient about how many other people are sleeping right now. I think these interactions are viable because they happen when the phone is often plugged in or on home wi-fi, and we can usefully ramp down the check-in times to conserve bandwidth and batter (and don't need to check in at all if the display has been off for a while).

Would this provide any social pressure to sleep properly? Kim, Kientz, Patel and Abowd wrote a paper on BuddyClock, an experimental product they had made to share sleep-state with a limited social network and felt that "social influence on another’s own behaviour indicates that the BuddyClock could be used as a persuasive technology to help others change their negative sleep patterns".


Presume grogginess

At least half of the time an alarm clock is being used, we know that its owner is confused, prone, and half-asleep; and from the survey I can see that about half of all respondents occasionally forget to set their clock, or mis-set it. What can be done about this?

Obviously the clock face needs to be readable. The button to switch off the alarm should be very visible: in the sketches here, it's also the only button, so there's no choice of where to click. It should (as a friend just pointed out to me in email) always be in the same position, whether the phone is in landscape or portrait "mode": you pick your phone up when you're prone, and having the button move around because the phone thinks you've turned it is just frustrating. The button should draw attention to itself, screaming "me! me!". I think this is also an appropriate time to allow the user to be aggressive and stab the screen of their phone.

What else? We could make an easy snooze gesture from shaking the alarm clock - I can imagine doing this in a frustrated "go away, not now" fashion myself. We can support users in making sure they get up at the right time by telling them the first thing they have planned to do the next day - i.e. by looking in their calendar for their first appointment, and floating it on-screen (mid right). On several occasions I myself have forgotten about an appointment when planning what time I get up, and Landry, Pierce and Isbell talked about such an approach in their paper Supporting routine decision-making with a next-generation alarm clock, though didn't discuss any findings.

Finally, we need to ensure that any alarm set is set to the right time. We could do this by showing the current exact time in the middle of the clock face whilst the user manipulates it (bottom left), or by showing whether it's AM or PM visually (bottom right).


Sound is 50% of the UI.

I've not done any work on this yet, but I think sound has two roles to play:

1. Obviously in the alarm itself: what's the best kind of sound to be woken up to? What can we do to the sound to engender a sense of urgency. Personally I reckon Polynomial-C by Aphex Twin must be a good candidate for a wake-up time: dreamy and etherial for the first minute with grating synthesisers poking in, then a beat kicking off. More research needed;
2. What about in the rest of the UI? If we're personifying the alarm, should it make noises when you set it (I always rather liked the gobblegobblegobble noise that Google Voice Search used to make when it was conducting a query)? Would this help in any way?

Phew. Thanks for reading this far. I'd really appreciate any comments or feedback you have on either the thinking or the process - particularly if you work as a designer.

I also need to work out a way of getting posts like this done quicker. I'd like to do more of them, to have more opportunities for feedback… but this has taken about 90 minutes.

Comments

[Dan]

In terms of your aim of good sleeping habits there are a few apps in that space already I suspect you might be aware of. Maybe mining them for useful patterns might help? They have some interesting behaviors associated with them (including the unnerving notion of putting your phone under your pillow whilst you sleep). As odd as that might sound (and likely contrarian to plugging it in elsewhere) its actually one decent way to get a sense of when the user falls asleep.

[LouiseHewitt]

make a bluetooth device that actually does the 'alarm' bit. That way you can keep all your crack-habit phone bits away from you while you sleep and the alarm device can be rubberised to make it fully chuckable/mashable/crushable/rageproof.

:D

Lou.

[Schlunzi]

I haven't needed an alarm clock since 2005 when I had my first child. Once or twice a year I need to catch a crazy early flight that requires me to get up even before my firstborn awakes. In those cases the ONLY feature (beyond going off at the right time) that matters to me is absolutely minimum noise of the alarm and no chance of any idiotic 'snooze' feature that suddenly kicks in again when I thought I had managed to get out of bed without waking everybody else.

[Tom Hume]

Thanks for taking the time to respond everyone :)

Dan: yep, I've used SleepCycle myself in the past (I think that's the iPhone one, or one of them). It's a bit different to what I'm after in a few ways. Firstly, it emphasises the tracking over being a clock, so it's quite a specialist thing (and as you point out, unnerving). I was after something a bit less intrusive, intimidating or nerdy. To use an analogy: if SleepCycle is Nike+, I'm trying to build a product that encourages people to get out and walk a bit more. The other side of it is that I've heard questionable things about the accuracy of vibration-based measurement of sleep (from conversations with people who've worked with sleep experts on similar things).

Lou: :) I worry that battle is already lost, given how many folks in the survey sleep next to their phones (6% have them *in bed*). I like the idea of an alarm that encourages you to attack it though...

Marcus: I thought that what you're describing (folks with kids not needing alarms) would be typical behaviour. The survey suggested that folks without children are *slightly* less likely to get up when planned (33% vs 28%), and similarly more likely to snooze. I thought they'd be up and out of bed in a shot - even up before the alarm went off - but that isn't what came out.

How do you do the minimum-of-noise thing? How did you find the balance between loud enough to wake you up, and quiet enough to avoid disturbing anyone else? And do you use vibrate to help with that?

[john cooper]

I like the idea of Nike+ 'get out and run more'
For your alarm clock you could view its purpose as 'sleep better, wake up on time' in which case a prompt to go to bed at the correct time would be a novel approach

[Tom Hume]

That's *exactly* what I'm going for, John... though the approach is more carrot than stick: "make people aware of their sleep habits and they're more likely to fix the problem themselves" instead of "beat them into going to bed earlier".

[Nick Richards]

On the analog clock face, you'll want to do some intensive prototyping around circular motions on glass, which can feel icky on some screens - you've limited yourself to iPhone so you should be able to work around this, or at least be sure that everything will be fine for your target.

Also, consider your disambiguation for 10 to 10 and other potentially ambiguous times whilst groggy and the relationship between the visual and interactive width of the clock hands. I like the 'non interactive' analog clock in the Quantifying sleep sketch as it's a cunning way to get around some of these issues, but again, think of the visual layering and where you're teaching people to touch and not touch in the app over time and make them really clear.

The only other thing I'd echo is the sociability argument, often there are two (or more!) people (or animals!) regulated by the same alarm. More control over volume (and not necessarily a 1-10 slider) would certainly be helpful.

[Tom Hume]

Thankyou Nick - that's really helpful and appreciated - all points noted :)

One clarification: which clock was the non-interactive one in Quantifying Sleep? I think they all have touch interactions around them...

[Nick Richards]

I meant the one where you moved a window rather than the hands. Since you have state here (something the user may normally expect to move they can't) it's worth making sure of your layering.

[David Mery]

I have the impression that you consider it more important to be able to switch off the alarm easily ("The button to switch off the alarm should be very visible") than to snooze it. If I understood you correctly I disagree! You'll want to switch off the alarm when you're sure you're not going to fall asleep again and so it doesn't need to be that easy to switch it off. However, you want to to kill the sound fast even if you're not fully awake so making it easy to snooze is more important. I find the handling of these two functions in the standard iPhone clock confusing.

Also about the visibility of a button. Buttons are not great when half-asleep, especially for all those who don't have a perfect vision without specs/contact lenses. Full screen tap or simple gestures seems better.

Another thing you should look into is the behaviour when phone is locked and when it is unlocked. Similarly that you want the same behaviour whether the phone is in portrait or landscape, you don't want to have to check whether it is locked or not.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the use case of setting the alarms (nearly) once and for all for all those with regular schedules. I.e., you program an alarm for weekdays and don't touch it except when on (bank) holidays. For this use case, what is more important than setting the alarm is how to temporary unset it and remember to do so. Maybe get some indication of bank holidays at least.

(Sorry I was too late to fill in your survey,)

[Vermont Ski]

I just like the way you made those sketches. :D

[Tom Hume]

Nick - thanks for the clarification.

David:hmm, I think I was considering "turn off" ahead of snoozing, yes - in that turning off seems like a core function, something you have to be able to find and do quickly in the morning; and snoozing is almost a feature for experts. I can see the logic behind having snooze more accessible, and was thinking of using a gesture for that. But then that probably shouldn't be the only way of doing it... and there's a training burden with gestures isn't there?

Is there a clash between the normal UI goal of "make things easy" and the goal of the alarm to wake up the user? In a sense, there's an argument for making the turning-off a little harder. I've seen this line of thinking play out in alarm clocks which force you to solve a maths puzzle before they turn off. Whilst I don't think that's a great idea (it plays v badly with the sociability/partner-waking side of things) I can get why it's been tried. Hmm, more thought needed.

Like the full-screen tap idea; yes, grogginess important; and I hadn't thought of locked access - I guess gestures would be useful here too (turn over to turn off - shake to snooze, I was thinking).

And yes, regular schedules are important, there's a post-it on the "Stroking not poking" sketch where I suddenly realised I hadn't considered it (despite 40% of survey respondents using this feature).

Thanks very much for the lengthy feedback, it's really helpful :)

[Kate Roberts]

What happens after you flick a clock upwards off the screen? Is the screen blank (in which case how do you know what to do next), does it go back to the welcome screen (in which case it would look like the half-a-clock at the top of the screen is the one you just tried to delete), does another alarm (if one's been set) come onto the screen?

Sceptical that a phone could reliably tell when you go to bed, especially if you are in the habit of watching TV, with the lights down, before you do so...

The thought "I need to go to sleep NOW" is a classic, anxiety-inducing cause of insomnia, so a clock that tells you how little sleep you'll get unless you fall asleep sharpish is going to be quite unwelcome if you have difficulty dropping off. As will knowing that other folks are happily snoozing. So I don't think this would go down well with the significant amount of people who suffer from insomnia…

Interesting that you think of the alarm clock as male! Traditionally it would be a woman (mother, nurse) who lulls you to sleep and wakes you up… But obviously I would be happier if it was a Non-Gendered Clock :)

[Tom Hume]

Thanks Kate - there are a few details which have stuck in my head and not made it into those sketches, aren't there?

If it's your only clock, stays off-screen (i.e. says "drag me down to use me again"). If it's not, flies off-screen and the screen pans horizontally to the next clock along (saying "it's gone, here's another" and allowing you to quickly flick all clocks off-screen to do a mass delete).

Agree re phone telling you when to go to bed. My tactic is to have it make you more aware of your habits and behaviour so you make the decision yourself - i.e. no "bedtime" alarms, say.

As for gender... I'm wondering about making it (don't laugh) an animal of some sort. Something cute but growly - so you love it for the noise it makes, don't expect it to be human, etc. And play to this by having it make little growling noises when you're spinning the clock around - i.e. have it react to your touch in a pet-like way.

[john cooper]

how about questioning the user at 'wake-up' "how did you sleep?" "did you get your 8 hours?" some simple tracking of positive/negative results could allow you to further customise the setup for user
constant 'not enough sleep' could then allow the app to push 'time to go to bed' notifications
i don't know how well an iphone app can be integrated with the calendar app - can it know when you have an early meeting?

[Tom Hume]

Absolutely - that "looking in the calendar" idea was in one of the academic papers I've found, and it's part of my "presume grogginess" sketches (reasoning that users are groggy when setting as well as when waking, and need help to remember when they're setting the alarm for).

I'm not so sure about asking users to quantify their sleep - or at least, I think it takes you down the road towards what the Zeo guys do. It's a really hard thing to quantify meaningfully - how long did you sleep for, how deeply, how interrupted was it? This is one reason why I've tried to take a lightweight approach towards sleep-tracking, of making sure you know when you ought to go to bed, but not much more. My assumption (which might be balls) is that if most people can get into go habits around going to bed earlier, that'll lead to an improvement in their wakefulness.