HoriSun
C&A
T&R
In short
For the course Aesthetics of Interaction the aim was to design a wake-up experience. How could you design an alarm clock that enriches your experience of waking up? How can you feel, see, hear or even smell time? If an alarm clock has no numbers, how do you know the time? Those are all questions we considered to design a new wake-up experience. This is HoriSun.​
grade
collaboration
course
COACHES
7
Stephan Wensveen
Emma Eisma
Dio Ijsseldijk
Levi Zoelen
Aesthetics of interaction
How does Horisun work?
In order to set the time for your alarm clock, the sphere must be pulled down. The glow-in-the-dark marks on the chord indicate the hours of sleep you will get. The further you pull, the longer you may sleep. To activate the alarm, you twist the light sphere, just like a lightbulb, after which the light switches off and you can peacefully go to sleep.
30 minutes before the alarm, the sphere will slowly light up. The closer it gets to the top, the brighter the light becomes. This is the first attempt to wake you up naturally by 'sunlight'. However, as the sphere reaches the top before you have woken up, the sphere will drop on the floor, making a gentle noise, loud enough to wake you up as a second attempt.
For who
The first inspiration that led to the development of HoriSun was extreme characters. It is designed for someone who prioritizes a healthy amount of sleep over waking up at a specific time. Therefore, there's no indication of when you will exactly be waking up. You only see the number of hours you will be sleeping by the (glow in the dark) marks on the chord.
Sunrise
HoriSun is entirely based on the metaphor of the sun. Sunrise is an experience which is pleasant, understood by all, and related to time. Therefore, this offers a perfect base for an intuitive interaction for the new wake-up experience. From rising motions of a sphere to glow-in-the-dark materials which are charged by sunlight, to brightness-increasing light, it can all be related back to the sun.
Throughout the night, the sphere will slowly rise. It will rise over your bed, as if your bed resembles the horizon above which the sun rises. Due to the glow-in-the-dark marks, you will be able to view how much time is left for you until you must wake up. In case you wake up early and want to sleep longer, you may pull the sphere back down again slightly to sleep a few more minutes.
As the sphere has dropped, it will start to blink. Since the magnetic endpiece of the chord also starts blinking, they indicate that both parts must be reattached. This interaction will cause the alarm to shut off, and therefore the blinking to stop. The reattaching of the sphere requires the user to sit up or even step out of bed in order to grab the sphere. As it must be reattached to the chord, which is now all the way at the top, the user must reach to the top, mimicking a stretching interaction which is suitable to do in the morning.
Learning points
My vision on aesthetics has broadened, believing aesthetics should not only be considered solely a form of beauty, but also a tool to inform the user on functionality and required interaction, hence stimulating intuitiveness. Generally, we tend to design safe products and therefore neglect the role of embodied interactions. However, I believe the key to innovative user experiences evoked by aesthetics is to think outside the box, with the limits being the boundaries for ‘safe design’. Therefore, taking risks in the exploration of aesthetics may lead to unconventional but novel designs. However, I believe that it is dependent on the purpose of the design to which extent risk-taking is appropriate. This complies with my personal view on the requirement to distinguish user needs from user wants in design. The more the purpose leans towards providing crucial functionalities (user needs) rather than desirable experiences (user wants), the earlier boundaries are reached for ‘safe’ design and the more riskful it may be to go beyond those boundaries.