Last September we worked on handheld electronics. In the design process our conversations were about ergonomics, usability, emotion, aesthetics, affordances, constraints, and mental mapping. The funny/frustrating thing about alarm clocks is that folks seem to use them in relatively rare circumstance, especially people under 30, like to catch a flight. As for travel alarm clocks, well, that's really called a cellphone, isn't it? The travel alarm clock is a product category with practical obsoletion on the forward horizon.

The challenge was to make it relevant.

With that in mind, my partner Kacey and I conceived Airavata, a travel ready cloud compatible hard drive*, speaker, and alarm-clock. Download, unwind, and wake-up. Airavata is designed to be durable, rechargeable, and widely compatible with integrated connection storage. Here, the design is represented as a 3D form model on the left* side of my nightstand - where i actually keep my phone at night. If this worked, it would live right there.

Speaking of, I just got to the end of that book on the table, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It's rare that I finish a book. I've never been afflicted by the need to finish what I begin as I'm not operating through primarily linear thought processes. So all things tend lead from one to the next without subjectation to defintive starts and stops, and sometimes circling back round again.

Airavata is named for a flying elephant because you can toss it in your carry-on and because elephants never forget...your images, your music, your annual reports, your whatever, and most importantly, always remembers your wake up call. Best of everything, it simplifies life with no confusing alarm sound choices. The only alarm sound is the entirety of this composition of Baby Elephant Walk.

*this is either the future or fiction: "cloud compatible hard drive" allows the Airavata user to back-up or retrieve information locally through Airavata's storage capacity or remotely via cloud computing compatibility and interface with another smart device.
*East. Left-right are relative.