Clocky is a

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create a ...

alarm clock An alarm clock (or sometimes just an alarm) is a clock that is designed to alert an individual or group of individuals at a specified time. The primary function of these clocks is to awaken people from their night's sleep or short naps; they ar ...

outfitted with wheels, allowing it to hide itself in order to force the owner awake in an attempt to find it. Invented for an industrial design class by Gauri Nanda, then a

graduate student Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. The organization and st ...

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

, Clocky won the 2005

Ig Nobel Prize The Ig Nobel Prize ( ) is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name o ...

Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...

. After earning her undergraduate degree from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and her

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

from MIT, Nanda founded a company, Nanda Home, to commercialize Clocky and other home products.

History

The original prototype, built in three days, was covered with

shag carpet Shag, or Shagged, or Shagger, or Shagging, or Shags may refer to: Animals * Shag or cormorant, a bird family ** European shag, a specific species of the shag or cormorant family ** Great cormorant another species of the family People Pseudonym ...

to appear like a pet. After the end of the design class for which she invented Clocky, Nanda did not make any further plans for the device. However, several months after a description was posted on the Media Lab website, pictures of Clocky were picked up on various technology product

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s including

Gizmodo ''Gizmodo'' ( ) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite '' io9'', w ...

Engadget ''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editor ...

, and

BoingBoing ''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice ...

. Within two weeks information about the device became an

Internet meme An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...

and Nanda, the inventor, had been booked to demonstrate the device on

Good Morning America ''Good Morning America'' (often abbreviated as ''GMA'') is an American morning television program that is broadcast on ABC. It debuted on November 3, 1975, and first expanded to weekends with the debut of a Sunday edition on January 3, 1993. ...

. MIT filed for a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling disclo ...

naming Nanda as the sole inventor and, with support from her family, left MIT after a

to found Nanda Home and develop the invention for commercial production. The newer version, though not carpeted, is still designed to appear

zoomorphic The word ''zoomorphism'' derives from the Greek ζωον (''zōon''), meaning "animal", and μορφη (''morphē''), meaning "shape" or "form". In the context of art, zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It c ...

. Production is outsourced to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

. In October 2012 during a video interview, Gauri mentioned that over 500,000 units had already been sold. The development of Clocky and marketing of it has become a Harvard Business School case study: Clocky, the Runaway Alarm Clock.

Operation

The device functions as a regular alarm clock, except that it moves on its own power when the snooze button is pressed a second time. A

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

ensures that the device will move at a random speed, in a random direction, and around obstacles, using a different route each time. Large wheels on

shock absorber A shock absorber or damper is a mechanical or hydraulic device designed to absorb and damp shock impulses. It does this by converting the kinetic energy of the shock into another form of energy (typically heat) which is then dissipated. Mos ...

s extend beyond the top of the clock to protect it from impact should it roll off a nightstand. By the time the alarm sounds again the device is in a place unknown to the user, who is forced to determine where it is, and possibly walk to that location to press the snooze button again.

Tocky

Tocky is Nanda Home's second generation moving alarm clock, first advertised in 2010 as the "tech-savvy cousin" of Clocky. Similar to Clocky, it is a digital alarm clock with changeable skin that runs away on the alarm, but it is spherical (hence, it rolls on its own body rather than on wheels), has a

touch screen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

display with a turnable round frame around it (to set the time and alarm), and receives up to over six hours of audio made by the recording the user's own voice or sounds directly to its microphone, or uploads through USB plugged from computers.Tocky Instructions
Tocky also has a demo mode which enables it to move about and play installed sounds, not in the form of setting off an alarm. Nanda Home has a similar product, Ticky which has the same features as Tocky but with a digital analog-style face.

References

{{reflist

External links

Winners in Competition "Gifts of The Year 2011"

nandahome.com
- official site Clock designs