Project #3 Experimental Clock:

Tomato Time

*** This timer is sped up 100x for demonstration purposes.
The link to the 30 min, full version of the timer can be found here.

Description

During my time as a statistics major in undergrad, I spent most of my days sulking away, procrastinating, and despising myself a ton for being lazy. My psychiatrist then (she's da real one) said something to the effect of how I wouldn't be so sad and angry about my laziness if I were truly lazy, and told me about Pomodoro Technique, a time management method that breaks up work time into intervals. I never tried doing work using the technique then, but this is what I was reminded of when I was given the assignment of making a personal clock. Just one tomato is ok, for it’ll make a sick carprese salad. No tomatoes is ok, u can always come back to collect more.

Design Process

Pomodoro Technique breaks up work to smaller chunks of time, and incentivizes the user by rewarding them with short breaks in between the chunks. This can make work manageable to some, but to some, or to anyone on some days, even the first block of 25 minutes can be daunting. I wanted to ease the intimidation of starting dreaded work with a fun illustration of a tomato, and guide the user through the work time through the ripening of the tomato from green to red.

Pomodoro technique is typically repeated to the 3rd or 4th repetition (100 minutes of work and 15 minutes of rest), a point at which you can reward yourself with a longer, 15-30 minute break. Through the timer, I wanted to convey the message that it's okay if you just can't be productive.

I tried to convey this message by associating value to even just collecting 1, 2, or 3 tomatoes, and thought of a playful way of assigning a possible recipe you can afford with even the few tomatoes the user collected.

Reflection

If I had more time, I would've incorporated sound (alarm sound) to indicate the end of each session with an audible signal. I would also work on cleaning the code – having a more strategic flow would definitely have reduced the number of if statements used (i.e. to have only certain elements of the tomato face change, instead of redrawing everything from the base ellipse).

Credits