An “Honest alarm clock” designed to displace the phone on the nightstand. This is the second in my “Candour” series of objects, that aim to be transparent through form instead of material. 

24 holes represent each hour of the day, rotating once daily. The current time is at the typical “6” position. Intentional sleeping pattens are the core of this design, the restriction to hourly wake times and forcing a definite decision. Grounded in physical interaction, a contactor is pushed through the corresponding hour hole. When the red wires line up the alarm sounds. The electro-mechanical process through which the user is woken is visible, intended to be the antithesis to black box software solutions. 

This was inspired by watching my father set up a new phone and set an alarm for one minutes time, checking it would go off. The mechanism in an analogue plug timer inspired experiments with a series of physical barriers that could be moved to impede the movement of an arm, activating an alarm. After iteration I swapped this round with the arm being placed in a series of receptacles, and the assembly turning as one  to complete a circuit on a contact positioned at the current time.

190 x 100mm
PETG
2024


© Callum Cooper 2026