[Postmortem] Flower Alarm Clock

I was in a group with Iva and we came up a new form of alarm clock, which is called “Flower Alarm Clock.” The purpose for the design is to wake people up with strong impact: scent, sound, and puzzles. The following categories are the analysis for our product:


Strength:

For the solution, we found out it will be an effective way to solve the problems that people have difficulty to wake up in the morning. Our solution for the design was add some elements to the alarm clock that are scent, sound, and puzzles. These three happen at the same time when the alarm is on. In order to wake up fully, the user need to wake up and solve the puzzles in order to cease the alarm. So, the user will fully wake up by finishing the puzzle and won’t go back to sleep.


Weakness:

The scent can be improved to gone faster after the alarm been turned off. We didn’t think about the situation when the scent would still remain after the alarm off. If the user happens to use “fart” scent as a way to wake him up, he or she won’t like the bad scent would not go away after the alarm clock been turned off. This is the consideration we need to improve for our design.


Design Process:

When we first came out to re-design an alarm clock that functions different than the others and started building the design brief, that was the key moment for this design process. At first, I only came up with ideas that I wanted to create something that does not look the way as it functions. Iva and I really thought outside of the box to create a product that looks attractive, functions well, and user enjoys the innovative appearance. Iva and I worked together as a group pretty well. She understood my concepts and my ideas really clearly even though I just told her I really like to make something creative and innovative. We didn’t have conflicts at all. Iva worked really hard on rendering the 3D modeling of our prototype as final storyboard. I mainly threw my ideas into words and wrote major contents for presentation. Along the process, we got together fix and edit the PowerPoint presentation and made the physical prototype.

The only trouble spot we faced was the user or audience we selected. We aimed our user group too broad at the first time. We basically aimed everyone to be our user group. It turned out wrong so that we located our target user as “kidults.” It appears more specific and helpful to our final solution and conclusion.


Conclusion:

With our effort on the finalized version, I consider our product would be a great exhibition piece. Because we added additional elements in the alarm clock that people may not think of before, it will bring a new horizon or dimension into the design world. The proper place for our exhibition should be the gallery of our Parsons building located at 2 West 13th St.