It’s on the oven, the microwave, the wall, and even your wrist. It sits in the corner of your screen and at the top of your mobile phone. Everywhere it’s a clock, reminding you, constraining you, into a rigid schedule. Break free from the stress of time – but still find a way to keep it – with the innovative Domino Clock from the Carbon Design Group.
The Domino Clock was born out of the Seattle-based Carbon Design Group’s Passion Project program, an initiative enacted to push boundaries and embrace the creativity of the design group’s creative staff. Similar to Google’s well-publicized 20% Time program that encourages engineers to work outside of their daily work, the Carbon Design Group’s Passion Project program selected the Domino Clock out of a number of employee concepts. The challenge was making it a reality.
In terms of aesthetics, the Domino Clock’s form came inherently to the project. Crafted as a literal reference to a domino, the engineers considered the ceramic material, weight, and tipping motion of actual dominoes in the construction of the clock. “The clock wants to communicate these same qualities,” says Joe Sullivan, industrial designer at Carbon Design Group, “from the materials down to the precise motion of the dots.”
To mimic the tipping motion of dominoes, each dot on the domino clock rotates on an axis using a sense of gravity to evoke the feeling of free fall. Eric Davis, one of Carbon’s mechanical engineers, developed a “single-poled motor”mechanism to create the flipping motion in a controlled, slow movement with little sound. Building a custom actuator for the device, Davis designed a mechanism that requires power only to initiate the movement – gravity takes care of the rest – resulting in an incredibly efficient machine that can handle thousands of transitions per day without wasting battery power.
Next, to ensure that the Domino Clock’s three individual pieces would present the correct time, the design team used wireless integration to effectively “connect” the three dominoes. As designing cutting-edge wireless technology is a hallmark of the Carbon Design Group, the team fit the clock with a precise, low-cost wireless solution to enable communication between the device’s components.
Able to hang on walls or stand freely on its own, the Domino Clock challenges the familiar assumptions for a timepiece by abstracting the idea of time. “We’re taking a well-known object out of its normal context,” Sullivan states, “and giving it new capabilities, allowing it to function as something completely different.”
The first Domino Clock will grace the walls of the Carbon Design Group’s studio early this year.
