Conquer the Snooze Button With Clocky

Conquer the Snooze Button With Clocky

By Linda Orlando

MIT's Media Lab may have come up with the best alarm clock ever designed. Decades ago when the snooze button was first introduced to the public, consumers couldn't rave enough about it. Suddenly there was a way for you to have an alarm wake you up and then give you a chance for a few more winks before waking you up again. You could even keep hitting that snooze button repeatedly until you decided you'd better go ahead and get up. But it didn't take long for folks to figure out ways to start abusing the snooze-if you hit the button a couple of times and get annoyed at the constant interruption of your dreams, you could just fumble with the switch and turn the darn thing off. Problem was, that meant you'd oversleep and get to work late-so why even have a snooze button if you're not going to let it do its thing?

There had to be a way to use the snooze without abusing the snooze, so people started getting creative. "I know-I'll put the alarm clock on the dresser, on the other side of the room, and if I have to go ahead and get up to turn off the alarm, I won't even need the snooze!" That idea may have worked for some folks, but for others, it just meant getting out of bed in a stupor, stumbling to the dresser, turning off the alarm altogether, and then falling back into bed and oversleeping. Bypassing the snooze entirely. Hmm...there had to be a better way.

Finally some snooze-avoidance junkie came up with a better idea and started spreading the idea around-just put the alarm clock in another room! If you have to not only get out of bed, but also walk down the hall and into another room, then surely you'd be awake enough not to want to go back to sleep by then. Trouble is, because the clock is so far away from the bedside, you'd have to remember to set the alarm on the days when you can't sleep in, then change the alarm on the weekends when you do want to sleep in, and without the clock right by the bed, you might not remember to do that. Which is a lot to keep track of. You'd end up oversleeping on a weekday and waking up furious at the crack of dawn on Saturday. So that plan would last for maybe one or two weeks, and then the alarm clock would be back, beaming its smug LCD grin at you from the bedside table.

Industrial designers through the years have tried their best to create innovative alarm clocks that will absolutely, positively get people out of bed, and some of them do work fairly well. For example, a Dutch designer recently invented an alarm clock that hangs from the ceiling, and each time the snooze button is pressed, it retracts incrementally toward the ceiling, forcing you to reach higher each time to smack the snooze. A few alternative alarm clocks grow brighter each time the snooze is hit, simulating sunrise to wake up your internal body clock. The 98-decibel Sonic Alert alarm clock, advertised as an "extremely loud, pulsating alarm," might work for some people, but for the faint of heart it might be a bit much. So there are other alternative alarm clocks out there, but they haven't completely solved the problem. Well, take heart-it just may be that the problem of snooze abuse will soon be a thing of the past.

The MIT Media Lab decided to put some genius-level brain power to the ongoing problem, and they have come up with a novel concept that fits seamlessly into a society that gets a kick out of a talking sea sponge wearing pants, a computer-generated insurance-selling lizard, and computer-enhanced cats that smile at you from the TV and tell you how much they like their new cat litter. Gauri Nanda, a graduate student at MIT, was one of the millions of American students who just couldn't seem to bring herself to get out of bed in the morning. One day (she'd evidently had a good night's sleep the night before), a revolutionary idea came to her, and Nanda set about designing the alarm clock of her dreams using a sophisticated understanding of the physiological nature of sleep and wake cycles. The result is Clocky.

Clocky is a furry oblong alarm clock on wheels. The small wheels are concealed by Clocky's shaggy coat. When the alarm clock goes off and the snooze button is pressed, it rolls off the bedside table and onto the floor, where it wheels away and bumps mindlessly into objects on the floor until it finds a suitable spot to hide and rest. When the alarm sounds again, the sleeper must get out of bed and search for the clock, which ensures that the person is fully awake before turning it off. An internal processor mixes things up and helps Clocky find a new hiding spot every day. "The Clocky requires you to do more than stick your arm out and tap something," says Dr. Todd Swick, a sleep specialist at the Houston Sleep Center in Texas. "It will recruit more of your senses-actually getting up, finding it, and shutting it off-and convince you to start the day."

For Gauri Nanda, "Having an alarm clock run away from you was an obvious solution." Nanda, who admits to having hit the snooze button for up to two hours herself on occasion, is quick to point out the main reason why Clocky may be the answer for many people who abuse their snooze buttons far too often. "In the foggy logic of our drowsiness, we disable the very device that is meant to wake us up. Having the alarm clock hide from me was just the most obvious way I could think of to get out of bed." She decided to give an annoying device some personality by making it an unconventional furry thing that's kind of cute. "The idea is hide-and-seek, to make things more playful," she says. "In designing Clocky, I was in part inspired by kittens I've had that would bite my toes every morning. Clocky is less of an annoying device, as it is a troublesome pet that you love anyway. It's also a bit ugly. But its unconventional looks keep the user calm, and inspire laughter at one of the most hated times of the day."

Nanda is working to obtain a patent for her creation, which she hopes will be available on the market within a year. Investors and vendors have already approached her, and the estimated cost of Clocky when it becomes available to consumers is between $20 and $30. According to Nanda, she thinks her design is going to help people although it probably won't solve all the problems of other alarm clocks, such as how they can bother other people sleeping in the same room. But she already has an answer for that. "I think the answer rests in the usage of multiple Clockies. Let's say there are two people with different sleep schedule sharing a room. Maybe one person's Clocky can tell the other to hush up if it has sounded off one too many times. Or, maybe they can form an alliance and simultaneously target the offending over-sleeper. I have adopted the philosophy that when two devices communicate, they can solve more problems-that is, two Clockies are better than one."

Nanda certainly has thought her invention through in great detail, and once it becomes commercially available, there will be millions of people worldwide thanking her each morning as they are awakened by their furry friend who wants to play hide and seek. But no matter how successful her invention is, Nanda can't afford to be caught napping. Her next design may have to be a Clocky with wheels that automatically regenerate after its owner finally gets tired of playing hide-and-seek and amputates them in a sleepy stupor.