We take many products in life for granted just because many of us still have nearly complete use of our senses, especially sight, hearing, and touch. We use our smartphones without a second thought about how people who can’t see or touch the screen can navigate our phone-centric world today. Unfortunately, most products are also designed without considering people with special needs, and products that are indeed designed for accessibility often lack the same design appeal as more common products. An alarm clock that wakes up hearing-impaired people in an effective yet satisfying way is one such example, and this concept tries to offer a solution that would delight even those that could hear the alarm go off anyway.
Designer: Gloria Jung
Since the earliest times, alarm clocks have always been aural more than visual, using loud sounds to call attention to themselves and, therefore, the time. It was only with the advent of smart devices with screens that some alarms have taken on a more visual aspect, but even then, the primary way alarms work is to blast you with sound. It’s a simple yet effective method that is, of course, pointless for someone who can’t hear properly.
There are “silent” options available, of course, but they won’t satisfy even some fully-hearing people. Smartwatches vibrate ever so gently and are only effective if you’re already half awake. Vibrating alarms specifically designed for people with hearing problems, on the other hand, are often too strong and give people a rude awakening. Both solutions also don’t offer the same kind of visual appeal and beauty that many alarm clocks have, especially the ones designed specifically to look pretty on top of your desk or bedside table.
ROUTINE takes its inspiration from nature’s silent alarm, light. Many alarm systems and smart lighting now try to use the science and psychology of light to offer a gentler and more natural way to wake up. This alarm clock concept that’s specifically designed for hearing-impaired people uses that same principle not just to wake you up but also to call your attention. The circular face of the alarm gradually lights up closer to the set alarm time until it reaches full brightness. If the person still doesn’t wake up or react to the alarm, it starts blinking with a stronger intensity. Turning off the alarm is as simple as pulling the ball-shaped switch down.
The base of the alarm also functions as a wireless charging pad for phones or other compatible devices. Considering this alarm clock will most likely end up beside your bed, it conveniently provides two functions in one. It helps save up on space, especially since the alarm clock will actually take up some space on any table or drawer.
The ROUTINE alarm clock concept definitely looks attractive with its featureless face and minimalist design. The one odd detail with the concept is that the actual “clock” part of the device is on the base, where a phone will cover it when it is charging. That would require the owner to sit or stand up just to see the time, which might actually be a tactic to get that person up and out of bed.
The name Mudita originates from the Sanskrit word which means ‘vicarious joy’ or the joy one gets from seeing others happy. Just like that, the company tells us everything we need to know about it – that their passion lies in giving their users joy, happiness, and contentment. Mudita’s journey to redefine modern tech started with the Mudita Pure, a phone designed around the aspects of functional purity, rather than hyperconnectivity and addictive UI patterns. This ethos has become a common strain for all of Mudita’s products, including its watch, the Mudita Moment, its minimalist smartphone apps Launcher and Space, and its two clocks, the Mudita Harmony, and the Mudita Bell.
On the left Mudita Harmony and on the right Mudita Bell.
Now it might seem unnatural for a tech company to make clocks, given that your smartphone essentially has one… but Mudita’s journey with the Harmony and Bell came from trying to break your connection/addiction to your smartphone while you’re getting into and out of bed. The two clocks, one digital and one analog, sport a pure (expect to hear that word often) experience centered around cultivating healthy patterns around sleep and wakefulness, and making sure that your day doesn’t start with a phone buzzing beside you. The clocks and their simplistic design help center you, and keep you from being over-reliant on technology that’s designed to addict.
The Mudita Harmony is a purpose-built clock designed to help you establish healthy bedtime habits, improve the quality of your sleep, as well as bring you a sense of calm. The clock sports a compact, circular, pebble gray design inspired by Japanese and Scandinavian minimalism, with an E Ink display on the front, and a simple knob and button interface on the top. Aside from being just a clock that also has an integrated alarm, the Harmony lets you take power naps, helps you meditate, provides ambient background sounds to calm you or help you sleep, and even has a thermometer that lets you measure the temperature of the room and adjust it accordingly to help you sleep more peacefully… and as for the alarm itself, the Harmony comes with a sound-bank of relaxing tones that gently coax you into wakefulness, played through the high-fidelity Harman speakers built into the back of the clock. The Harmony takes on a much more holistic approach than any regular clock (or even the clock app on your phone) does. The E Ink display melds beautifully into the clock’s calming, non-intrusive design, with high-contrast visibility that’s easy to read in the day, and a soothing frontight that makes the clock visible at night too, without the screen being too bright. The clock allows you to activate and deactivate alarms while also providing an additional snooze feature: a snooze chime that prevents you from going back to sleep, and is perhaps one of the only clocks to even have a dedicated power nap setting. Studies by NASA in 1995 found that a 26-minute power nap boosted performance by 34% and alertness by 54% – metrics that Mudita used to design the Harmony’s power nap feature. The setting lets you take a nap between 10 to 20 minutes, but ideally not longer than 30 minutes (to prevent drowsiness).
Mudita Bell Alarm Clock
Additionally, the Harmony even helps you prepare for bedtime, giving you a reminder based on your waking alarm, so you get the right amount of hours of sleep, while also ensuring you maintain healthy sleeping timings/patterns. There’s a timer for meditation too, allowing you to time your mindfulness sessions and giving you the ability to disconnect from the world and center yourself. The timers feature a gong at the end that let you know when the session ends.
While Mudita Harmony is designed with features to help maintain healthy sleeping habits from the moment we wake up till we fall asleep, the Mudita Bell is a much more traditional bedside clock that takes the alarm clock’s most primal function and does it right. It echoes the same pure Japandi (Japanese + Scandinavian) style of design, this time with an analog clock face, and 10 soothing melodies designed to wake you up in a gradual manner that lets you feel well-rested. The Bell, just like the Harmony, comes with a Harman speaker on its back too.
Both the Harmony and the Bell focus on ensuring you sleep and wake up in the healthiest way possible, and eliminate the need to set alarms on your phone, or even have your phone around you. The compact clocks sit well on any bedside table, and are rechargeable via USB-C, allowing you to use your bedside charger to replenish your clock’s battery every couple of months. Moreover, while the Bell uses an analog mechanism, the Harmony runs on the MuditaOS, their open-source operating system that receives periodic updates to ensure you get the best out of your Mudita device and ultimately, out of life itself.
“Well begun is half the work done!” says Varenya Raj, the designer behind Nidra, a radio that helps people monitor their mood when they wake up.
Right off the back, Nidra looks quite unlike most bedside radios. It sports a half-log-shaped design with a plush button on one end, a soft carpet on another, and a printer in between. The idea behind the Nidra stems from starting your day off on the right note. If you wake up in a less-than-ideal mood, whack the cushion as you would at a game of whack-a-mole, and Nidra plays out positive news. If you’re in a pretty good mood when you wake up, gently stroke the velvety carpet, and Nidra plays news across different categories. At the end of the month, the radio prints out a little docket letting you know where your mood’s been over the last 30 days, helping you chart your sleep schedule as well as mental and emotional wellbeing.
The idea for Nidra stemmed from the concept of ‘time being equal to money’. Created as the ultimate productivity tool (because you’re much more productive and focused when you’re in a good mood), Nidra’s aim was to help office-goers have a better overview of their overall mental health. Needless to say, Nidra’s appeal has vastly evolved thanks to the pandemic, and it’s now more of a general mental-health tool. Strike it on your bad days for a pick-me-up, stroke it on your good days for general news, and Nidra charts how you’ve felt over the past month. It prints out a tiny slip for you to analyze and hopefully retrospect over, so your next month is better than your last.
On the inside, the Nidra contains a button, a force-sensing resistor, a thermal printer, a speaker, and an Arduino UNO computer that powers the device. The button’s designed to be pretty large and cushioned, so you could easily slam it while half-asleep, while the FSR comes with a soft, fluffy cloth similar to dog-fur. Depending on which part of Nidra you interact with, the interactions are inputted and received by the Arduino PC which processes it and appropriately chooses an RSS-based news feed to read out. A tiny button on front of the device lets you control Nidra’s volume too!
It’s not for everyone, but there’s nothing like waking up with the sun. Since getting out of bed with the sunrise is seen by some as only a sport reserved for the masochists among us, there are some alternative product designs that offer the same rejuvenated early-morning feeling, but don’t strain your eyes in the process. Incorporating the sunrise and sunset into an alarm clock’s digital facade, designer Yu Zechen came up with Sveglia Luce.
Zechen conceived Sveglia Luce in two shapes: one round and the other rectangular. Imitating the orbit around the globe, Sveglia Luce’s circular shape mimics a sunrise and sunset behind rows of mountain summits and a foggy horizon. Throughout the day, as time goes by, the illuminated sun travels the circumference of Sveglia Luce’s facade indicating the actual sun’s position in our skies. Zechen’s rectangular alarm clock still uses an illuminated sun as the clock’s main imagery, but instead of following the sun’s orbit around Earth and its position in the sky, it mimics a sunrise and sunset as viewed from a head-on perspective. Complete with alarm capabilities, night and day modes, as well as volume adjusters, Sveglia Luce blends a conventional alarm clock with an artful display.
In addition to the alarm clock’s imitative digital display, an accompanying scheduling app allows users to set their alarms remotely and taps into the same display as the physical clock, with changing home screens that project the sun’s placement in the sky. Now, no matter how late we sleep in, we can say we woke up with the sun.
Designer: Yu Zechen
As time goes on, the illuminated sun projection travels around the clock’s circumference indicating its real position in the sky.
A soft, optic white front display resembles those early, foggy mornings when the sun is still reaching its peak.
A rectangular display offers a similar projection, only displaying the sun’s placement when seen head-on.
An accompanying scheduling app allows users to control their clock even when they’re away from it.
The app also incorporates digital simulations of the sun’s placement in the sky.
The Apple Watch might just be the world’s tiniest bedside clock. That screen was designed to tell the time from a maximum of 2 feet away, so keeping it on your bedside table at night just really makes little sense when you need to lift it up and hold it against your face to read the time (a problem that gets compounded when you have poor eyesight as I do). It isn’t a really complicated problem, which is what makes the NightWatch dock so great, because it employs a really simple solution. The NightWatch is an Apple Watch dock that comes with a massive curved glass element on the front that magnifies its screen. Dock your watch behind the massive lens and it makes your watch-screen larger, enhancing its visibility manifold. Designed to turn your charging smartwatch into a much more efficient bedside clock, the NightWatch does more than just increase visibility… it enhances your watch’s audio too, amplifying it to make your alarm much more audible.
The NightWatch is a pretty simple accessory that enhances your Apple Watch’s abilities. It doesn’t come with its own charger, but will let you hook your watch’s charger into it. Once assembled, you can easily slide your Apple Watch into its unique design, and that calibrated glass lens on the front enlarges the screen like a magnifying glass would, making numbers much more visible when your watch is in Nightstand mode. It comes with a patented system that even lets you tap the glass surface to ‘wake’ up your Apple Watch’s display, so you can read the time clearly… and when your watch’s alarm begins ringing, special acoustic channels designed in the NightWatch dock’s base help amplify your watch’s audio, making that alarm much louder. The NightWatch, unfortunately, doesn’t have a snooze button, so you’ll need to pull the smartwatch out of its dock to stop or snooze your alarm!
In 2017, NASA engineer-turned-YouTuber Mark Rober took it upon himself to redesign the car horn. It’s no secret that car horns are a major contributor to road rage. There’s nothing quite as alerting and annoying as a ‘honk’ sound (even though it’s by design), and listening to enough honking can completely mess with your stress levels as you try to pay attention to your driving. While sleeping isn’t as difficult as driving, it still requires the mind to remain relaxed – and the alarm clock’s loud ringing often defeats that purpose. Loud clocks jolt you out of your sleep, making you feel groggy, grumpy, and under-rested even if you’ve slept your 7-8 hours.
OneClock rejects the notion that an ‘alarm’ clock should be ‘alarming’. Instead, it replaces the clock’s screeching siren-like sound with something more melodious. Partnering with Grammy Award-winning artist Jon Natchez, the OneClock coaxes you out of bed using a series of original musical arrangements designed to gently wake you up without shocking your senses. Instead of the jarring sound often associated with alarm clocks (and even the alarm apps on your phone), OneClock focuses on transitioning you into wakefulness and uplifting your spirit too in the hopes that your day begins on a positive note.
In its mission towards being a better clock to wake up to, OneClock intentionally opts for an analog, WiFi-free, Bluetooth-free, non-IoT design. It’s pretty easy to snooze your smartphone’s alarm and slip right into checking your notifications, browsing social media, and just starting your day with a screen right in your face. With its classic, analog approach, OneClock ensures you don’t wake up to a smartphone screen inundated with messages, mails, and notifications. The clock comes with a relatively minimalist design, sporting an outer body made from aluminum, with wooden panels on the front and back. The front face features a Swiss-made timepiece, a knob that lets you set your alarm time and trigger the night light, and finally, a speaker which plays the alarm music. The back features two knobs, letting you set the clock’s time, and control your alarm’s volume. On the inside, a PCB runs OneClock’s AI algorithm that automatically selects, alternates, and remixes the OneClock’s music, giving you something new to wake up to every day… and unlike your traditional alarm clock, or that app on your phone, OneClock gently ushers you into wakefulness by playing the music softly before bringing it to a crescendo… and its impact ends up positively influencing the rest of your day too, allowing you to be more chipper and even more productive!
Aside from having a puppy lick my face, the Bariseur 2.0 gives me everything I need to begin my day the right way!
The Bariseur really made waves when the first edition debuted back in 2016. A great design experience always aims at being a multisensory one. We love motorbikes not just because they get us from A to B, they’re a thrill. Whether it’s the wind in your hair, the purr of the motor, or just the way the motorbike looks, it’s the overall multisensory experience that makes riding a bike so goddamn amazing. I’d say that the Bariseur does the same thing with waking up. Nobody really likes being jolted awake by a neurotic noise-making box, right? Bariseur’s ability to cross over into the multisensory realm makes waking up an absolute treat, because not only does it wake you up with sound, it tantalizes your nostrils with the smell of fresh coffee, getting you out of bed with something to look forward to, and probably a sunnier disposition too.
It’s 2020, the world is practically on fire, but the Bariseur 2.0 does a pretty good job of making mornings a little more pleasurable than they would have been. In its second edition, the beverage-brewing alarm clock comes with an updated design featuring a better brewing system using a one-of-a-kind immersion brewer that works equally well with tea or coffee. Rather than brewing your drink right into the cup, the immersion brewer keeps your beverage contained in a chamber, allowing you to pour yourself a cuppa whenever you need it. The smell, however, wafts out pretty effortlessly, allowing you to wake up to the aroma of coffee beans or aromatic tea. The Bariseur 2.0 even features a redesigned shower-head and smart induction heater that allows water to be scattered across your coffee grounds or tea leaves evenly, and at a precise temperature of 94° C – ideal for brewing.
Along with its subtle-but-effective improvements, the Bariseur even comes with a mini-fridge to keep a small glass of milk refrigerated for you to pour into your coffee or tea, and if you want to use the apparatus without the alarm feature, the immersion brewer is detachable, so you can brew multiple cups in a day. The Bariseur 2.0 even features an added wireless charging mat that helps replenish your phone, giving you just the sheer joy of beginning your day with a fresh hot cup of chai/coffee and a fresh 100% charged smartphone. It’s the little pleasures, really!
Best Buy dropped the price of Lenovo’s Smart Clock with Google Assistant to $40 today. This brings the price closer to that of a “regular” alarm clock, but the Smart Clock offers so much more. For $40, you get features like a sunrise alarm, an ambien...
If the words ‘Alarm Clock’ make you feel even the slightest bit annoyed or anxious, it’s probably because the first word is literally ALARM… which is an emotion nobody likes feeling the first thing in the morning. I’ve never really realized this but alarm clocks are some of the most functional yet horribly designed products in the world. They get the job done the same way getting doused with a glass of water gets the job done. It’s an inelegant solution, and you end up feeling like crap the first thing in the morning. Now yes, you can set the tone of birds chirping as an alarm sound on your phone… it isn’t too difficult to be honest, but here’s the caveat. Phones are addictive, and having your phone by your bedside is good if you need waking up, but terrible if you’re trying to go to bed. You go to set your alarm at night and before you know it, you’re checking Instagram or Twitter, or LinkedIn if you’re that kind of person. The guys at Loftie have a pretty neat solution – a clock that’s designed to gently coax you awake, but also to help you fall asleep faster… and above all, designed to be effective enough so that you don’t need to have your phone right beside you.
If anything, this pandemic has thrown a massive spanner in everyone’s sleep cycle. Being at home 24×7, working odd hours, hardly stepping out, they’re all a recipe for what I call daytime disillusionment. You end up forming your own definition of what a well structured day is, and before you know it, it’s 4am and you’re wide awake even though you should have been asleep four hours ago. Loftie’s mindful design (created by people who’ve honed their design skills at companies like IDEO) is like an external version of your circadian rhythm. Its calming design, with a minimal interface, helps let you know when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to wake up. A combination of a clock, speaker, and ambient light, the Loftie is nothing like an alarm clock. It has a calming presence from the get-go, and it’s perhaps the first alarm clock that’s designed to let you know when it’s time to sleep, to actually help you sleep, and to wake you up in a way that’s effective yet comforting.
The Loftie’s feature list is simple. It comes with a clock face (which dims at night so you’re not distracted), a night-light that you can switch on or off with the push of a single button, and the ability to choose from a variety of soothing playlists to put you to sleep. If you rely on a noise-machine to go to bed, Loftie comes with all the noise-types, from white noise to brown noise (yes, that’s a thing), as well as soothing soundscapes like forest-noises or a crackling fireplace. The audio lulls you into a calming slumber, and when it’s time to wake up, Loftie’s two-part alarm system wakes you without startling you out of your sleep. The first round of the alarm plays a soft melody to partially wake you, while round two aims at fully awakening your senses with a cheerful tune that sets the right tone for the rest of your day. Aside from letting you know when it’s time to wake up, Loftie even gives you gentle cues to let you know when to go to bed, by shining its night-light as a way of telling you it’s time to wind down. The full-feature alarm clock even works as a Bluetooth speaker, allowing you to play music from your mobile, and an app even lets you control the alarm features via your smartphone… although it’s a feature that’s just there for good measure. You’re honestly much better off sleeping with just the Loftie by your bedside, instead of your smartphone. I mean, we all need to fix our sleep cycles right now, don’t we?
Loftie – Ditch your Smartphone Alarm & Get a Better Night’s Rest
The Loftie features a dimmable display, nightlight, two-phase alarm, and custom content playable right on the device, including guided meditations, sound baths, breathwork exercises, sleep playlists, plus a variety of relaxing sounds.
Technology is great but we’re all a bit addicted. And with many of us working from home right now, screen time has gone up, not down. What happened to unplugging? To taking space? To calm evenings and bright mornings?
Start happy. Loftie is a brand dedicated to creating better tech-life balance for people everywhere. Because technology is only as good as the way it makes us feel, the team designs things that make you feel optimally rested, relaxed, and refreshed.
The Loftie Features & Benefits
The Alarm Clock for Non-alarmists
Loftie features a dimmable display, nightlight, two-phase alarm, and custom content playable right on the device, including guided meditations, sound baths, breathwork exercises, sleep playlists, plus a variety of relaxing sounds.
Its sturdy, analog feel is reassuring. No small feat in a category that hasn’t been updated since the ‘80’s. In short, it’s everything you need for a cozier bedroom vibe.
Open Your Eyes Not Your Email
What’s equally important though, is everything Loftie doesn’t do: Connect to your email, apps, and social media, and all the anxiety they bring along. That’s because, while most of us default to our smartphone’s alarm, research shows that removing technology from the bedroom is one of the best ways to enhance sleep length and quality.
A Better Sleep, by Design
Loftie is the most intuitive and reliable alarm clock in the world, from the texture of its buttons to the light of its display to the sounds that put you to sleep and wake you up.
The two-phase alarm system was designed for the way humans actually wake up: In two distinct stages. The first sound gently lulls you out of your slumber while the second gets you out of bed and into your day.
A warm glow from the built-in nightlight signals it’s time to start thinking about drifting off.
Meditations, Sound baths, and Breathwork. Unique content from the best instructors out there, now available on your nightstand—no phone required.
Sounds for sound sleep – Scientifically calibrated white, brown, and pink noises (plus nature sounds, naturally) to lull you to sleep and keep you there. They fade out before your alarm goes off so your brain doesn’t get mixed messages.
Clock your sleep patterns – Through an internal light sensor, timer, and app Loftie creates personalized sleep data and suggestions that help you understand and optimize the rest you are actually getting.
Head in the clouds – Because Loftie is cloud-connected, you can combine it with more than 600 other services (like Philips Smart Bulbs) on IFTTT.
No app necessary. But there’s a great one if you want it—available for both iOS and Android. Set your alarm remotely. Schedule multiple alarms or alarms that vary day-by-day. Plus, you can pre-select one of your own playlists to make winding down even easier.
The Science
Daytime technology is bad for the bedtime brain, whether we’re quarantined or not. Why?
– We scroll when we should be sleeping. – The stuff we look at makes us feel awake and alert when our brains and bodies are begging for rest. – The blue light from our phones tells our brain not to make melatonin (the hormone that tells your body it’s time to go to sleep). See you at 3 AM.
Then, when it comes to waking up, smartphones do us harm again. We’re hit with a barrage of outside stressors right as we tune into consciousness. Studies show that leaving our phones outside the bedroom makes us happier—and more likely to maintain healthy phone behaviors throughout the day. We are creatures of habit after all—and when we remove temptation from our environment, it makes it easier for us to change our behavior.
Not everyone is a morning person, and I admit I am so far removed from that audience that I could actually make friends with a bunch of owls instead of being included in their group. I am sure many of us here, including me, want to wake up in the morning but either we don’t hear our alarms because we choose a soft tune or we awaken with rage because we chose a super-upbeat loud song. What we need is a more natural wake up call, something aligned with the body’s circadian rhythms which the Mudita Bell calming alarm clock knows how to do.
Most of us scroll through our social media apps before bed and the blue light exposure keeps our brain alert even after we keep the phone down. This calming alarm clock wants to replace the screen-scrolling so we can get rest according to our natural sleep cycles – a key in waking up rested and relaxed. It has an E-Ink screen which means you aren’t actually looking at a screen but at the ink that is programmed to move to create visuals, thus reducing your exposure to blue light. Limiting screen time helps us fall us asleep sooner and also into a deeper slumber which is crucial if you want to stop waking up grumpy or tired. The minimalist design of the clock has a soothing effect on your eyes which is important considering it is the last thing you see before bed and the first thing you see when you wake up.
It all starts with “Let me just check the time” or “I’ll just check if my alarm is on” and we descend into the notifications rabbit hole. With this Mudita alarm clock and the E-Ink screen, you can track time and set your alarms without being lured into scrolling through your apps. The alarm wakes you up with gentle acoustic sounds that don’t make you want to smash it. It also includes a sensor to track the air quality in your room and sometimes making small changes like adding a humidifier (based on what the air quality is) can make our sleeping patterns healthier. To make it a well-rounded health and wellness product, this alarm clock also has a meditation timer that comes pre-set with different meditation lengths and simple instructions to guide you through them. Now we really have no reason to wake up groggy so let’s make 2020 the year of the morning people!
