BACKGROUND: Waking up by force is physically and spiritually jarring, but we must do it nearly all the time. By interview and direct observation, we found a number of ways in which common alarm clocks could be improved. Many are simple conveniences, but the most essential finding was that most people eventually become "immune" to their alarms. To that end, we proposed a plugin architecture where the alarm triggers any number of seperate modules, similar to that of an electric timer with a snooze button.

Proposed add-on modules:

• Heat/Cooling unit
• Bed Vibrator
• Bright Lamp
• Baking unit
• Bass Generator
• Air Cannon

In addition, we propose several improvements to the clock unit itself:

• Calendar Aware: knows not to go off on weekends, holidays
• Presence Aware: only active when there is enough pressure on the bed to indicate presence of a person
• Option to have waking module "dimmed up": whether a lamp or sound or vibration is used as a waking agent, the option to have this sensation dimmed up from zero so user is eased into waking

In the end, we just built the bacon-cooking part because we received such a strong response from people.

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