This alarm clock is almost comically easy to snooze once, but much harder to ignore a second time.
The CinderClock is a 3D-printed alarm clock with a big, red 10-millimeter (0.4-inch) arcade button on top that designers sized so you can hit it without aiming. In snooze mode, however, the options for turning it off are increasingly challenging, like pressing the button three times at least half a second apart, repeating a random sequence using the front interface’s joystick, or winning a mini video game on the front screen.
“I use CinderClock myself every day,” says Aknazar Arysbek, founder of the hardware development studio Endothermal Systems, which designed the clock. “I stopped using my phone for alarms and it has been great. Not looking at the phone for a while before going to bed and after waking up unloads my brain from all those distractions.”
Instead of a smartphone alarm that comes with distractions and notifications or a high-end alarm clock that requires an app, the CinderClock is unconnected, making it easy to wake up without being tempted to doomscroll.
The clock is the first product Endothermal Systems has released, and it was designed under a series of constraints. The company wanted it to be a standalone machine with no need to connect to the internet, it had to be mechanical with tactile inputs, and it had to be modular, with every major component repairable and replaceable.
“Constraint is a core part of all design decisions we face,” since they narrow down your choices to a few meaningful ones, Arysbek tells Fast Company in an email.
Designers started out thinking the finished product would be about the size of two Coke cans, but it ended up being the size of a toaster. Everything about the physical interface was designed to be minimalist, from the arcade button on top to the simple front interface with just a narrow screen, joystick, four buttons, and speakers.
The CinderClock has multiple settings for setting alarms daily, irregularly, or for custom schedules, and there’s a screensaver-like ambient setting for full-screen animations called names like “fire” and “rain.” It includes eight games including pong, maze, fly bid, a desert runner game where you dodge spiders and jump over cactus, and a horizontal Tetris-style block game. Users can play the games for fun or use them to gate their alarm so they have to win to turn it off.
The company’s employees aim to make hardware that’s high quality, affordable, and repairable, especially everyday objects that don’t satisfy them. An alarm clock was at the top of the list.
“A clock was an obvious first product; it is a part of what you do first thing in the morning,” Arysbek says. “Next, we might target things like lamps, e-readers, or even furniture pieces. Things that make life easier, but are also built to last.”