How do you wake up?
You probably have your old alarm clock hiding somewhere in your room covered with spiderwebs…The mobile phone killed it long time ago. Today, we can set the alarm to go on at different times during the week which is useful but geeky. I personally like to set the alarm every day because it shows me how much time I have to sleep…
Some people take it to the extreme and try to analyze when is your best time to wake up by listening to your body with the phone microphone like the Happywakeup guys or even better, with Sleeptracker you can wear a huge wrist watch while you sleep which will monitor signals from your body…
This week, I had to do some work with Nokia 6230 which is a classic phone loved by many due to its simplicity. I had to work from home and took it with me. On the next day, I found myself waking up at around 05:24 to unfamiliar alarm sounds… I knew it wasn’t my phone and had to crawl out of bed to find the naughty thing… You might think I should have switched off the alarm but I thought I was doing even better by switching off the mobile- but NO!!! This amazing phone can wake itself up to sound the alarm even if it is off!
To me that is exactly what they were speaking about in Tron when they tried to unplug the evil computer with no success. From an Interaction Design point of view, I think this is really wrong. Whenever you set something up to work later you should be able to see that it is on. A more elegant solution might be a feature like ‘flight mode’ for the night, reducing battery usage while still giving you some feedback on the mobile screen.
Tags: alarm, Interaction Design, Mobile, Nokia 6230