This has been passed around the Internet for awhile now, but I think it’s worth sharing here again. Sebastiaan de With shares his experiences designing an alarm clock app for Android.
It sounds like a hellish nightmare to do this, and is probably why a lot of the great app design is taking place on closed systems such as iOS. But Android vs. iOS aside, Sebastiaan brings up a great point when it comes to designing in general: > I’d say every designer should design a clock at some point. There’s a lot of ways you can design a clock, and it’s surprisingly difficult to design something so attractive that it is remarkable, yet neutral enough to be liked by a very wide audience. One only has to look at the market for watches to see how intensely personal clock design is. I am still not quite content, and I’ll probably never be: I’ve found designing clocks to be a rather consuming affair.
It’s something that I’ve never taken the time to design myself, but also something I could see a great challenge to do right. If I ever wade into the waters of app design, a clock will definitely be one of my top priorities.