How do you do?: August 2010

Final Prototype.

This is the final model of the Guess the Time clock, as exhibited.

I intended the housing for the guess the time clock to be very simple, not over designed, just a shell that would fit the inner workings and have a clear, ergonomical form. The tilted facia enables the user to have a clearer view of the screen as well as easier use of the mounted keypad.

The choice to use wood as the base material was an aesthetic one as well as being easily attainable. I liked the contrast between the organic wood grain and the animated screen.

Can wolves use a keyboard?

As colour had been a strong aesthetic throughout my project, I felt this was the obvious way to go with the guess the time clock. I would use colour as the accuracy indicator. Some way of showing the user how close they had guessed to the real time.

After establishing a structure of what I wanted the object to do, I then needed to find a way to apply it. A Flash animation seemed the simplest option, coding a digital clock face to change colour as the time was entered. As you typed in your guessed time, depending on how close to the real time you were, the digits would turn pinker for earlier or greener for later. So you would know if the digits turned this colour, you had guessed around 15 minutes later than the real time.

I then wanted to house this screen animation with a keyboard to create one object.

Real-world applications

From the "What's the Time, Mr. Wolf" document, I found people took a certain enjoyment out of being able to guess at the time. There was a certain competitive edge to it amongst participants. I hadn't considered that the findings would be of interest to anyone but myself. However, all participants requested confirmation of their own accuracy and how it compared to others. Some wanted a second shot at it.

It began to uncover itself as a potential learning tool. It could be a way of gauging your own personal accuracy at guessing the time against the real time. If I could design a way to structure a built in accuracy indicator, the user could learn their own patterns and improve.

Could this remove the need for a standard clock?

I wanted to consider how this could work as a real world application. I decided it would need to expand from 2D into a working object.

What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?

This started out as a very basic level investigation into peoples relationship with clocks and time, as a construct. I wanted to see if there was a pattern or average in how accurately people were able to guess the time without the use of a clock.

I created this document to gather my findings aesthetically. The user was asked to guess the time (without cheating, thank you) by colouring in the appropriate digits.

The design was inspired from a project by Maarten Baas that considered how our measurement and understanding of time would be altered if we ourselves became the clock. (See it here)

Remember, wolves don't wear watches.