An interactive timepiece that reminds people to value the present and experience the beauty of slowing down.

 

The advance of technology has caused people to live life on the go. As planning and communication have become more fluid, people expect others to respond promptly. The demands that cause social anxiety and communication addiction. Over time, this anxious lifestyle leads people to lose patience and to forget to feel the moment.

 

NOW – BE PRESENT challenges people to step outside of their anxious cycle and to consider the significance of the present moment. NOW makes novel use of sound to induce anxiety, which can only be allayed via a tangible point of interaction: a wooden dial which must be adjusted to match the current moment as it is represented by the hour hand of an analog clock. This interface helps people to focus, reminding them to live more slowly and to appreciate every moment.

In this two-months final project at CIID, I set a goal for my project which is to challenge people’s preconceptions and expectations of “ Time” and provoke them to rethink the real value of it in their daily life. To achieve that, I began my research with 10 in-depth interviews of people from  8 different cultures and age ranging from 9 ~ 71. My objective is to understand their perception of time and the role time plays in their life. As I distilled insights from the interviews, it became clearer that people appear to be pushed towards an ever faster and busier lifestyle due to the advance of technology. When people are overloaded with this fast-paced lifestyle,  it leads them to lose their patience and forget to take time for themselves and their loved ones. The clock becomes a stress tool that constantly reminds them to focus on future and to satisfy others' expectations of time.

Therefore, there is a need to transform the clock into a tool to remind people to stay at present moment. I created an interactive clock that prompts people to slow down and consider the significance of the present moment. The concept is inspired by the action of tuning the radio whereby people have to stay focused and listen carefully until finding the right channel.

NOW – BE PRESENT mimics the chaos of our busy lives using white noise. Only by finding the present moment on the wooden dial of an analog clock, people can dissipate the white noise and regain peace. This tangible interaction helps people to reduce their pace and immerse in the beauty of the present moment during this process.