We often think of time as an external force, as something that continues to move with or without us and with which we have very little in common. But we all exist within and alongside time, keeping it with our own bodies. The UJI clock was conceived by designers Ivor Williams, Jonathan Chomko, and Federico Floriani from research group Being and Dying. Instead of ticking away the seconds, minutes, and hours of a day, the clock keeps time with your own heartbeat, making you the center of the world and the marker of time in your own small universe.

The clock comes with monitors that attach to the owner’s body. The devices keep track of your heartbeat and vital signs, which are translated into the movement of the minute and hour hands. The hands don’t sweep around the numberless clock face. Rather, they slowly tick back and forth on a small scale, providing a somewhat zen experience as your heartbeat is transformed into a visual measure.

The ceramic UJI wall clock plays on the classic symbol of the wall clock as a reminder that we exist within time. It removes the sense of urgency that comes with counting the minutes and hours between one event and another. The user, then, becomes part of the object and the object part of the user, reminding us what it is like to simple exist in time rather than only passing through it.

(via: designboom)

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Move over Orville and Wilbur, there’s a new pair of Wright brothers. While their improvement on the alarm clock may not be as historically important as the fixed-wing aircraft, UK-based brothers Adrian and Jeremy do have one thing over the original Wrights: the Red Dot ‘Best of the Best Design’ award.

As most of us have experienced, the race to shut off an alarm clock is often overly complicated by unnecessary knobs, buttons and the infuriating phone touchscreen. The Flip Alarm Clock, a design the duo created for French brand Lexon, hopes to get rid of your wake-up woes.When set, the side labeled ‘On’ (easily recognizable by the huge letters) faces up. To turn off, the cute little box is simply lifted and turned topsy-turvy.

The classic seven-segment display reorients automatically so it is always readable. The clock also features a touch-sensitive snooze and lighted display. It would most likely suit those who make it out of bed the first try, as its simplicity could easily be taken advantage of by over-zealous sleepers.

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We all have a different perspective on life. As much as we hate to begin this article with both a pun and a cliche, it’s rarely as appropriate a time as this one. The Tel Aviv-based design duo Studio Ve has created physical representations of this cliche in the form of a series of clocks.

The Perspective series of wall clocks puts the focus on the hands and not the face. According to the project’s Kickstarter page, the peculiar angles at which the hands hang “[demonstrate] a different approach to the dimension of time.” Each of the five clocks’ hands are a series of white lines that make the typical three-hand clock layout look primitive. With the 3D layouts, time is meant to be perceived more than read.

The clocks’ relation to personality type is largely what drove the concept. “For some, time is a crucial part of life – a motivator, a judge, a measuring stick,” the website goes on to explain. “For others, time serves a more fluid purpose, more of a suggestion than anything else. We developed the Perspective Series to explore the way time is experienced by different people in different ways.”

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Are you among those people who believe that the past should stay in the past? The Delete Clock from designers Li Ke, Pang Sheng Li and Chen Yi Lin kind of forces you to become one of those people by letting you write out all of the day’s appointments right on the clock’s face – and then erasing them once their time has passed.

The surface of the clock is made of the same material used to make whiteboards. You can scribble down tasks for the day, draw little doodles, or just remind yourself of doctor’s appointments and other important events. But the catch is that you only have a limited time to look at these scrawlings, because after the hour hand passes over your marks, they are instantly erased.

The rather low-tech approach works well on this artistic clock. However, you will have to get used to the hour hand being way bigger than the minute hand, something that we think would probably lead to a lot of confusion and maybe even some missed appointments.

The post Zen Clock Only Lets You Obsess Over Schedule Temporarily first appeared on Gajitz.

If you’re the type of person who can hit the “snooze” button a few dozen times in the morning and regularly find yourself late because of it, the singNshock alarm clock is an electrifying solution. Conceived by designer Sankalp Sinha, the concept is a simple but effective one: use a jolt of electricity to get people out of bed.

The singNshock works just like a regular alarm clock: it displays the time, and when it’s time to wake up it plays your choice of music. But when you reach for the button to turn the alarm off, you are treated to a tiny shock. It’s only a few millivolts of electricity, so it’s not enough to actually hurt.

According to the designer, this tiny bit of electricity is just enough to stimulate neurological functions. You have the option of turning the shock function off, so if you don’t feel like being jolted awake you can rely on just the sound and colored lights from the streamlined modern clock. The singNshock is only a concept at the moment, but Sinha is looking for support to turn it into a marketable product.

The post Shocking! Alarm Clock Wakes Your Brain With a Jolt of Power first appeared on Gajitz.