Today is the change from Summer to Winter time in Europe. The light outside subtly is giving an indicator what time it currently is. This indicator gets shifted and one needs to adapt to the new metrics again. For me it always is a weird feeling of being in between the two times, so I thought I wanted to dedicate today’s project to the shift.
Concept
Instead of having a hard cut off the one hour, I want to experiment with a clock that runs with either 23 hours or 25 hours of a day, to display the change but more subtly. It thereby should not reduce or increase the amount of hours, simply increase or decrease the time slightly.
Process
I decided for the typical Braun Alarm Clock as it is one of my favorites.
Playing around with the different times and understanding again how minutes and hours are calculated, helped to understand the concept of time again better. To indicate the slightly adjusted time, the currently passed seconds are mapped onto the whole amount of seconds if the day would have either 23 or 25 hours, yet still displaying on the clock just 24 hours. This way we are able to read the time as we are used to, it simply seems to pass slightly faster or slower to in the end meet with the correct one again. This helps to (for at least the day of the change) smoothly transition into the right time, while the light is just slightly off to the previous learned behavior.
Outcome
The final clock displays the current time either on the summer time shift, winter time shift, or regularly. A small text on the clock face, indicates what time is currently shown. By clicking space one can toggle between the three modes. You can find the sketch here.