Here I experimented with different ways of designing my Time Tool to make it suitable, easy to understand & use based on feedback and inspiration from Maclays 'The Clock' and Salvador Dali's 'melting clock' design seen in his painting The Persistence of Memory. Instead of designing the aesthetic and visuals of my tool, I should have put more effort into the actual workings of my prototype such as its concept because it was hard to explain my tool to peers.
Original Prototype
How it works:
Concept: Relaxation
We live in a busy society. Instead of taking someone of a physical journey with no meaning why not encourage them to map out themselves?
Navigating yourself and finding out who you are is an important step in life, without this individuals would lack personality.
Sometimes life can get overwhelming. We need time to sit back and relax to find ourselves.
My users (Target Market)
This tool is aimed at those who need a break from the outside world.
Covering a huge demographic my tool needs to be modified to who would benefit from my time tool the most.
Accessible needs in my prototype are considered using the 'else' algorithm I learned in the human algorithm workshop last week.
- Young Children
- Older Teens - ideal for exam stress & dealing with puberty
- University Students - adapting to adult life can be demanding and pressure from society & meeting grade criteria can become overwhelming
- Stress inducing work/jobs - any type of work that involves in-demand roles e.g NHS nurses, doctors, sales workers, teachers etc
"A tool to help myself "
To cope with unnecessary stress I have forced myself into by lack of a creative outlook this tool will also benefit myself during its design process, encouraging me to continue and try my best on this project - even if it's working on a topic I don't enjoy
User can match the hands-on my clock to the actual time of day, aka when they are completing the task. Hour, minute and second hands are included.
24 Hour clock - endless possibilities - activities can be completed any time of day. Prototype clock runs with a 12-hour clock inside surrounded by the 24 times on the outside ring to mirror when a day starts and ends (also shown through colour coding.
Yellow = daytime
Blue = nighttime
Physical Prototype development: 'Time Tool'
Test #1- testing the concept
Before developing my Time Tool into a physical prototype, I needed to experiment with my idea and see whether my concept worked or not. This eliminated me from creating potential mistakes further down the line.
You can see that I used the regular watch to experiment with the meaning behind my Time Tool. This let me alter the meanings of my tool in various ways. At this time of testing, I assigned directions in the form of step instructions to each number (hour, minute and second) to take my user on a journey. Unfortunately, this was not a success because my user was left at a dead end and would have to wait for the time to change in order to move backwards. At this point, I wondered whether it would be better to take my user on a mental journey rather than a physical one because my Time Tool was so similar to the human algorithm challenge and its meaning felt basic and unadventurous according to user feedback, and therefore changed my concept into what it is now - also linking to my previous tarot card idea of investigating the 'map of the soul'.
Test #2
The time of testing was 00:20 using my second Time Tool prototype (the developed one with yellow and blue colour coding)
I tested this clock on my flatmate where they matched the hands of my dartboard with the actual time being 20 mins past midnight.
This meant that my flatmate had to turn off all her electronics for 20 minutes until the next activity, participating in a skincare routine, begun.
Result:
My flatmate managed to turn off all electronics but her desklamp, otherwise, we would be complete darkness. Because I wanted to gain feedback from my flatmate during this time, I needed to be present and therefore the idea of turning off all light sources at this time of night would have been uncomfortable. However, my flatmate agreed that if she were to complete the exercise alone it would be a manageable and may increase her likelihood of falling asleep, something which my Time Tool can be used for to get the user to relax.
Feedback
Positive:
• Nice contrast of blue and yellow - makes it unique therefore colour coding it easy-to-follow
• Activities are suitable for relaxation & de-stress but could be developed - gain more research
• Accessible activities reach a wide audience and suit people's needs
• Activities are suitable for the corresponding time
Negative: • Wrong times - the prototype is confusing, why is digital times used on outside instead of inside?
Would be easier to understand if 12-hour clock was on the outside.
• Can be hard to do certain activities for a long period - do they have to last an hour? could they last minutes instead? - takes less time out of the day.
• illustrations/motifs could be used instead of words if possible
• some spelling mistakes
After explaining my other ideas to my flatmate, they felt more intrigued towards the use of a dartboard to base activities off a game of chance. This is because the dartboard would be:
• unbiased
• interactive
• engaging
• good for letting out frustration!
After gaining valuable feedback, I should develop a clock idea based on the appearance and engagement of a dartboard.
Test #3 - Compass Exercise
Bringing my prototype into the next weekly workshop worked in my advantage because my prototype was similar to the paper compass we made in class, yet I had made my paper time tool before even taking part in the workshop. I took this valuable time to develop and test out my prototype on my coursemates.
To make the compass relevant to my own project I incorporated de-stress relaxation activities such as "watch flowers bloom", "go for a stroll outside and look up to the sky, else look outside the window' as these are daily activities we forget to notice. I included the 'else' option to make it accessible for my coursemates because my coursemate Ellen had a cold and couldn't go outside! Therefore tested the 'else' activities instead, showing how important having an 'else' rule is, especially when aiming at a wider target market and making the tool accessible at any given moment.
The journey:
Using a random number generator my users were indicated corresponding activities on the compass.
I tried to run the experiment until my user had tested out all activities but due to the randomness of the generator, my user had to complete the same activities over and over again and therefore we ended up having to go around the compass manually to complete each activity once over.
My users participated in an array of these relaxing activities, allowing me to separate those with positive effects from those with negative (Ellen's favourite was playing multiplayer computer games with other coursemates when the number generator struck 7 but this was rather a stimulating than relaxing activity).
Testing on different coursemates allowed me to gain more experience and feedback from those with other points of view.
Mindfulness Drawings, 'Visualise your thoughts & Emotions' (2020) by Ellen
Watching Flowers Bloom with Gyuri
...a speed lapse of course! Got us very hooked onto David Attenborough and was soothing to play in the background while myself and other coursemates progressed in our work - showing that activities from my time tool can be completed side-by-side with daily chores to make them more pleasurable and less anxiety-inducing (such as dealing with overwhelming stress when you forget to catch up!)
Overall I benefitted hugely from this exercise because working with other students led me to insights that I may not have come up with otherwise. Moreover, I was able to participate in other student's compass' and see how their weekly makes linked to their own tools and maps, gaining new inspirational sources and learning about how different journeys can be perceived.
Test #4 - Improved Prototype Dartboard
Here you can see that I attached magnet 'paper' to my developed time tool prototype and colour coded it into a dartboard appearance, allowing multiple activities to be available for each corresponding time stamp suited for different times of the day: (day & night activities).
For this experiment, my user didn't have to totally relay on time to judge their relaxation activity:
A magnetic dart can be thrown at the time tool to initiate an activity
or the activity can be chosen based on the current time
To make this experiment fun, I attached my dartboard to my flat's fridge (which we found to be not-so-totally magnetic). My user threw darts at the board to let out her frustration until she hit an activity. (because the board didn't have a very strong magnetic strength, the darts would often bounce off the board depending on how hard my user threw them. (This should be improved during the development of my final time tool). The dartboard led me to think whether this strategy is 100% chance or not because users may have an indication of the sort of activity they want to take part in and therefore aim their dart at said activity.
My user hit 3 darts at the board meaning she had time slots to work with when completing the activities.
For example, the amount of time corresponding on the dartboard clock between:
dart 1 and 2,
2 and 3 and,
3 and 1.
I also let my user try dropping the darts with no intention face flat onto my dartboard to see if this would create a better sense of chance but the darts would bounce off the board quickly and therefore timescales betweens the darts were difficult to record visually. Unfortunately, the clock hands fell off my dartboard but luckily, due to a rather successful experiment, they were no longer necessary for my future creation.
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