Week 4 Exercise 2 - Alarm Clock Prototypes

This exercise required us to design and describe a horizontal, vertical and a diagonal prototype for an alarm clock application for smartphones. The features of the application include:

• Setting, editing and deleting multiple alarms
• Daisy-chaining alarms
• Setting different tones for different alarms
• Shaking the phone to snooze the alarm

Horizontal Prototype

User interface for alarm application

My horizontal prototype simply tests the user interface of the alarm application. There are four main screens:

1. The first screen the user is presented with when they launch the application is the list of alarms. Here they can view all created alarms, enable/disable each one using switches, edit/delete each alarm. Most importantly, the 'Add Alarm' button is located on the top for easy access.
2. If the user presses 'Add Alarm' on the previous screen (or even edits one), they will be presented with the second screen where they will be able to customise the different options for the alarm. Options include repeating, tone, a descriptive label, daisy-chaining and of course the alarm's time. If the user wishes to daisy-chain alarms, they can select that option and they will be taken to the next screen (#3)
3. On this screen, the user is presented with a list of all existing alarms they wish to daisy-chain with. They can select multiple alarms or none at all. The layout of this screen is very similar to the screen where users can choose the alarm's tone - it is simply a list.
4. When the alarm rings, this screen will be displayed (taking up the entire display because it requires the user's attention). The alarm's time is shown topmost followed by the descriptive label. The two buttons are self-explanatory. On this screen, the user also has the option to shake the phone to snooze.

Vertical Prototype

The aim of my vertical prototype is to test the dismissing and snoozing of the alarm when it rings. Essentially, it will use screen #4 from above and test each aspect of it including overall layout, the readability of the alarm time and label, the effectiveness of the snooze button (and shake-to-snooze functionality).

Diagonal Prototype

The diagonal prototype aims to test a a scenario where the user undertakes the following tasks:

1. Launch the application and view you alarms
2. Add a new alarm for 5:00pm with the label "Tea time". The alarm should repeat on Mondays and Thursdays. It should have the tone 'Xylophone' and should trigger (i.e. daisy chain) Alarm 1.

The purpose of this prototype is to see where the user is having difficulty in completing tasks.