Wall Clock Ticks, it drives me crazy. I hate wall clocks, but telling time is pretty important. What if we will make a wall clock, which doesn't tick? So let's use digital screens to make it silent. (I know, that you can do it without making it completely digital, but wheres the fun in that?). So now we have another digital device which can show a lot of information besides time itself, but related to it nevertheless:
Schedule, important events, wether or even traffic jams and news.

One of the most important things in this concept, that although device stays on all the time, there is almost no active interaction or in other words no «interface».

So the main challenge of this concept was to create a system of predictions which would show important for the person information based on time. And in the same time it should be relevant and not bothersome. Also it should show time (Duh).

1st Version of the Brief

I decided to gather some inspiration so I read 3 pop-science books:

The Brief history of time by Stephen Hawking (1988)
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (2013)
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean M Carroll (2010)

From first glance those books seems irrelevant for the topic. They are, really. But first, it gave the name for my project (Entropy, definition) and second it just inspired me to an idea of personalised time, relative time if you may.

I also searched for other information about time keeping 10 000 years clock

Middle aged time — what interesting, hours at night and hours at day were different.
Book of Hours
The evolution of the clock

I also looked at some history of timekeeping and time-devices:

Interestingly by the year of 2016 we can make extremely precise clock. But the concept of timekeeping have never really changed. It's always just more precise numbers, there is no ‘time enhancing’ solution.

And of course I looked into some digital clock stuff:

Samsung Tizen was… Shit. It was a smartphone inside a watch. Even Watch faces were boring. And it didn't provide anything useful: to see a notification you needed to fiddle with menus for half a minute.

Android Wear was a bit better. I liked the fact that my phone was silent, and the ability to see notifications at my instant.
Also google now was sometimes OK, but I almost never saw any cards from it, probably because it's targeted to the US market and I'm in Russia.
Again, it wasn't device which actually helped me, it still felt like a inconvenient smartphone.

Don't know how it in operation, but I liked the idea of TIMELINE which be default shows present and important for present information, and by taps you can see the past and future events.
Also it seems to be more interesting than any smart watch because of the battery lige and the fact that there is only 4 buttons for interaction — which means that a Watch should be really smart to show you only important information.

Also don't know how it in operation. I liked the idea of time travel which showed a lot of stuff. UI was better than Android Wear, still don't think that it a necessary device.

I also looked at other smart-related devices which include
A lot of work of Steve Mann

My Bathroom Mirror is smarten than yours.

That's what I call an inspiration. It was mostly the idea what I had, I just wanted to make it even smarter. I thought that it lacked one important feature. It showed almost everything at once. What I thought should be done is smart algorithm which shows only the most important stuff.

And here is a guide how to make something similar to the ‘Bathroom Mirror’. I considered it as one of the ways of making my clock. But then I thought 'It's a clock. Not a Mirror' . Also I considered a name for my project MirrorMirror. but after this article I understood how lame it was.

A fun and simple project. Which combines connectivity features and real life interactions.
Even if it's not that smart, I like how simple it is. It just works. Probably I shouldn't overcomplicate things. Also, it had great design process story.

It is very interesting concept. It is a smart watch with only one function show events. What cool about it is how organic it places on the clock face. And also it provide a good perspective when something is.
I considered to make appointments in the same fashion with my smart clock

PICTURE

In the end, my project is just another take on digital assistants as Google Now or Siri. So it's only logical to actually research into it.

A very good service, it's has the same concept, which I want to use — 'Showing only relevant information NOW'. it still not THE FUTURE but it's pretty damn close. The sad thing is it doesn't really show anything useful.

All the Cards of Google Now
It's important to understand what's already possible with the technologies, and google now cards provide this knowledge. In the end all my ideas are sort of works in real life.

Siri use completely different concept to Google Now — it utilise content on demand.
What I don't like about Siri is that It works only on the phone and also you cound't type what you want. I'm not that comfortable with talking to my phone and besides, I just can't do it in a meeteng or in metro.

All Siri commands

What I especially liked about Cortana — it is everywhere, on Xbox, Windows Phones or desktop computers. It's important to be universal. Also it doen't restrickted to only voice. Thats 2 reasons why Siri never clicked to me.

All Cortana commands

First I thought that to be a good clock and be more interesting it should be round. Or octagonal and be rounded by bezels. It should be discrete in order to be a good clock — it shouldn't glow in the dark when one watching a movie or just sleeps. That's puts a restriction on a technology from which It could be made:

E-ink or AMOLED would be perfect. But I wanted to build prototype so any circular screen would be good. What I learned is that consumer can't buy a Circular display bigger than 2". A shame. There is no square displays either. The closest thing I found is 17" LCD panels with 5:4 ratio. It could easily be obtained by buying the old LCD monitor.

Squarish LCD panel put some restrictions on the design: rectengular smart clock will just look as any screen on the wall. That's why it's important to make it rounder by besels sich in this ikea clock.

PICTURE

PIC OF MY MOCKUP

Then I made I survey how people use watches and clocks. To my surprise, almost no one used the wall clock, or even wristwatches. 10 of 15 people I surveyed were only using phones and computers as their clock. And only 3 people actually had a wall clock.

That got me thinking:

There is no point of making just one device which should be used as a timekeeping device, we have a whole variety of devices. That's why it's important that on every device would be the same information. And then it striked me. I don't need to make any clock at all. It should be just a system for all devices.

So I rewritten my Brief (link)

I was thinking that only handful of companies were able to create something like this: Apple, Google, Amazon, Yandex.

So I tried to make my project an Apple time (link)

But my tutor said that it's a bad taste so I decided to just make a concept:

What was made you can see at.