University Project | Product Design
the presence timer
We used Zen Buddhist principles to create calmer technology in the connected age.
Mount Fuji representing activity or dormancy from a distance.
Let’s face facts. We’re always online or pretending that we aren’t always online. We are connected no matter how far we distance our devices from our senses. We end up buying a Nokia brick phone, leave the smartphone in the other room to avoid seeing incoming messages, emails, notifications, dings and vibrations. Yet, the thought of doing all that avoidance work in itself is distraction enough.
Sometimes we need to communicate to the people we interact with online that we’re working on something right now.
The presence timer embodies time in physical form. Rather than a green dot for online or the words (offline) that are impersonal, it uses ambient visual representation of a low peak (0 to 30 minutes) or high peak (30 minutes to 1 hour) mountain to communicate time to your internet contacts.
Each box represents a person, and that person can be anywhere in the world. You are able to see that person X needs a long time without being interrupted while Y is completely free. The boxes communicate through WiFi. Once the timer is running out the mountain gets smaller and smaller.
The dial is stitched with conductive yarn. We are conductors, our finger closes the circuit. The plus sign starts the timer.
A friend box equipped with a servo motor that pushes the prong up & down relative to the timer.
Control boxes have a timer and a personal mountain. Friend boxes magnetically attach to each other through a snap mechanism.
A control box with the custom LED’s under the dial to show how much time is active and selected. The Arduino Uno, servo motors and the top hatch.
The magnets are covered with conductive fabric which allows current to flow between the boxes for them to power up.
