Synthesizing explorations
To summarise:
Flipping
A clock that explores what it means to experience hours without minutes and minutes without hours. Making the consumption of smaller units of time deliberate and purpose-driven. Analogous to changing gears in a car. Visualising how much time people spend in each mode of time.
Interaction: toggling modes
Keywords: Perception, uncertainty, intuition, awareness
What if…
they log moments of frustration, impulse or boredom?
it is a digital watch using the sharp LED
the person has to access minutes by looking more closely
it learnt my schedule over time and switched for me
the representation was physical
Stretching
Spatially-aware time digits that present different time units based on the distance between each other. Embodied sense of accessing time, through physical sensing. Analogous to stretching an elastic band.
Interaction: stretching
Keywords: control, sensation, focus, tangible
What if…
the digits snapped at specific points
it gave haptic feedback while stretching
the seconds slowed down as you stretched
Warping
A clock that reflects our relative experience of time. It allows the person to explore different rates of change of minutes over an hour by selecting diff. warp profiles. Analogous to
Interaction: picking between multi-modal
Keywords: Perception, relativity, manipulation, curiosity
What if…
it visualized the slowing down/speeding up at the end of the hour
it learnt my schedule over time and visualised it
it combined with the stretching idea
Reflections
I was thinking about if I want to proceed with a series of objects or if I want to focus on one or maybe combine some ideas from one with another. The common theme behind these explorations is giving people a feeling of more deliberate control over this mysterious entity of time. In all cases, the person has agency to choose how they want to experience or play with time.
If I think of them on a spectrum of ‘human control’, object 1 could be ‘flipping’ (with less control, more vulnerability) while object 2 could be a combination of ‘stretching’ and ‘warping’ (more control and precision). Intuitive control vs. tangible control
If I think of it from an interaction perspective, there is a toggle, slider and encoder in play.
if I think of it from a ‘familiarity’ criteria, I think flipping is more familiar, stretching is less so and the warping experience is more weird.
There are some more crazy ideas but it maybe too late to explore them. Also, they may stray from my goal of giving people control and ability to slow down:
crowdsourced time
Lying clocks (voice interface) It manipulates you to influence your behaviour positively
depending on how frequently you check, the interval displayed adapts. For example, if i check it a lot while leaving for work, it shows minutes but as i check it less, it reduces to just showing me the hour. If I check even less (say I’m on holiday), it just shows me the date(?)
The personal minute: You can estimate a minute and that becomes your personal clock. You can retrain it once a year.