Designing an inclusive and accessible alarm clock

Let’s play a design game. The task is to come up with the most accessible, most inclusive alarm clock.

I used to give this task to my classes when I was teaching at IBM, and we had the most thought provoking conversations.

There are no good or bad ideas here. But consider that the more inclusive you make it, the more features you add, the more expensive it will get, at some point it will be unreasonable. But the more you compromise on features, the less people will be able to use it.

Let me set one more rule here, it is a standalone clock. Anything it can do it is part of the clock you design. Otherwise, it would be easy to say that you will just connect to it using your phone and an app, which probably would be your most inclusive solution.

Spoiler alert, at the end of the article, you will not walk away with an alarm clock design, but with a number of ideas that you haven’t thought about before for designing a fully inclusive product.

In this article, for the most part, I will bring up ideas, ask many questions to leave it up to you to answer or ponder.

Originally I tried to organize the questions either grouped by type of disability or type of functionality, but as you will find out, at some point things will get so interconnected that a logical approach will not really work. But it is not too important either, so I’ll just approach ideas mostly by functionality, adding a few random connections as needed.

What’s in it for you?

Most likely you are not going to design this clock, but you can take the same approach when you design your product or service, let that be:

• A web site
• A software
• A workshop
• A museum exhibit
• A concert
• A sight seeing tour
• A line of products

You will find that anything you create will have some implications

So, let’s start asking questions:

How will you tell the time?

• Will you look at it and see the numbers?
• In case you are visually impaired, how big should the numbers be?
• What kind of background/foreground contrast will you use?
• What if you can’t see?
• Will you implement a button that you can press to announce the time? How big will the button be, what color and contrast?
• In which language will it announce the time?
• English only?
• How many people won’t be able to use the clock who don’t understand English?
• Will you make it available in the most frequently used 20 languages?
• How about people who only speak the other 7000 languages used around the world?
• If you substantially increase the number of languages what will translation cost? Especially to languages which are spoken only by a handful of people? Who will record the sound samples for languages which don’t have a text to speech system?
• How about deaf blind people?
• Will you add a tactile clockface or a vibrate feature they can activate by the push of a button?

Ok, so far if all goes well, most people around the world will be able to tell the time.

But this is an alarm clock after all, you will have to set the time and the alarm.

How will you set the time and alarm?

• Will you set it manually by moving the clock hands and the alarm dial?
• What if you are not able to use your hands, will you use voice control?

Now we are back to the language question, I won’t go through this again.

Many people have muscular disabilities who are not only not able to use their hands, but it is impacting their speech, they may not be able to use voice control.

Will you implement an eye tracking system, gesture tracking system or alternative switches that they can activate by head movements or blowing into a tube? Consider that these systems are usually external, so according to our rules you will have to build it into the clock.

• What kind of features will you add for people with cognitive disabilities to set multiple alarms to track a series of routines?
• How will people with cognitive disabilities receive reminders to set up the next alarms?

How will it wake you up?

• Will you use a regular alarm sound?
• What if you can’t hear it? A vibrate feature, a flashing light, a wearable extension or a bed shaker? You will have to make sure you can turn off the flashing light feature for people with seizure disorder.

How will you turn off the alarm?

• Will you add a button people can push to turn it off or to snooze?
• Will you use voice control? Now we are back to language and understanding speech.
• What happens if the alarm is not turned off for a certain amount of time? Will you add an emergency alert functionality to notify a doctor or relative in case there is a medical emergency?
• How will it make the notification? Probably using the internet would be the most efficient. How will you set up this feature, add emergency contacts, etc.? I’ll get back to this soon.
• But what if the internet connection is lost, will you put the alarm clock on the phone network?

Regarding the internet connection, I wasn’t sure if I am following the standalone rule here, because to send out an emergency alert, you will by default have to connect with another device even if through the phone network or radio. I’ll leave this up to you.

What will power the clock?

• Will you plug it into an electric outlet?
• What if you need to rely on it to take medication at a certain time. Will you add a battery backup?
• How long will the battery last?
• Where there is a lack of stable electricity, will you add the ability to use replaceable batteries?
• If batteries are not readily available, will it have a solar power option? But alarm clocks are mostly used inside.

And a few more random features:

• How can you set the volume?
• How can you set the alarm tone and sound?

Now it is easy to see that if we are including people with various disabilities, the clock will need some customization and it will have to be digital.

How will you customize it?

• Voice control? What is the default language?
• A menu based system?
• How will you operate the menu?
• Will you use buttons? How big, and how discernable?
• What if you can’t use the buttons? Will you implement alternative communication methods? See above below setting the alarm.

What will the menu contain? Just a few ideas:

• Setting the language
• Turning communication features on and off to decrease sensory overload.
• Reset to default

Now that we have the menu we can also implement setting the clock there, as an alternative.

But the menu just added an extra layer of complexity. It will somehow have to communicate the options and changes.

• Will you implement a digital display?
• How big will it be so that it can accommodate large text?
• What if you can’t see the large text either? Now we are back to voice recognition and language.
• But what if you are deaf blind? A simple vibrate feedback won’t be sufficient for a complex menu.
• Will you add refreshable braille to the clock? That system alone probably will be more expensive than the clock itself. Will you charge all people for it who don’t need it? That is, most likely the majority of the users.

Most people who need a braille display would have one they could connect to the clock, but this violates our standalone rule. Also, how would you set it up in the menu if you need to read braille in order to set up your braille system?

How will people with severe dyslexia or dyscalculia interact with the menus or the clock in general?

Now this clock is really getting complex. It will need a user manual.

How will you distribute the user manual to the users?

• Regular print, large print, braille or electronic format?
• Will you send all versions to all people? In which languages?
• How big will it be? Who will pay for it especially that people won’t touch the majority of it?

And a few more considerations:

For the sake of simplicity I didn’t include cases of severe and multiple disabilities.

Also, I did not take into consideration the marketing, purchasing and delivery of the clock, not to mention unboxing and initial setup. If the clock connects to the internet, the users privacy also needs to be protected, and it wouldbe great if the clock would be environmentally sustainable.

Most likely these will create many more new challenges.

So, for a second imagine that you are the designer of this alarm clock.

• How will you decide on which functionality to include?
• How will you decide which people to exclude?
• How will you make the clock affordable and inclusive at the same time?

Did I throw you a curve ball? If you ask me it is entirely impossible to design a fully inclusive clock. If you consider the population of the globe, probably millions of people will have some reason why they won’t be able to use or purchase your clock, no matter how inclusive and accessible you make it.

This is partly why there are so many different types of alarm clocks, most of them fulfilling the needs of the majority of the people, with certain accessibility features built in. And for those who need a unique set of features usually they make a highly specialized clock, in which case the target audience is small and the price is high.

But pretend that you still want to create an inclusive clock. I’m sure I didn’t think about so many questions I could have asked. What else would you add to the list? If you leave it in a comment below, I will add it to the list.

Conclusion

When you create your next service or product, you can look at this approach and translate it to your own needs.

Think about how will you be more inclusive by considering groups of people you may not have considered before.

If you need help brainstorming the inclusiveness or accessibility of your next product or service, contact me, I’ll be happy to work with you to reach out to a wider audience.