Silver Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design · 2012
Dominus plus Clock application.
- A' Design Award 2012 Silver Winner in Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design
- Awarded April 15, 2012
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 47,532
- Verification code C569A3A66E · Verify this award
About Dominus plus Clock application.
Dominus plus expresses time in an original way. Like dots on dominoe pieces three groups of dots represent: hours, tens of minutes and minutes. The time of day can be read from the color of the dots: green for AM; yellow for PM. The application contains a timer, an alarm clock and chimes. All functions are navigable by touching discrete corner dots. It is had an original and artistic design presenting the actual 21st century Face of Time. It is designed in a beautiful symbiosis with Apple portable devices' cases. It has a simple interface with only a few necessary words to operate it.
This distinguished interface design, recognized with a Silver A' Design Award in the Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design category, represents a thoughtful meditation on how temporal information might be communicated through purely visual means that transcend linguistic barriers while engaging users through aesthetic pleasure. The work demonstrates mastery of chromatic coding as a functional design strategy, employing green, red, and blue not merely as decorative choices but as intuitive signifiers that differentiate clock, alarm, and timer modes respectively. The dot-matrix approach references the heritage of early electronic displays while elevating this utilitarian format through careful attention to sphere rendering, spacing proportions, and the rhythmic relationship between activated and dormant display elements. Technical accomplishment is evident in the precise geometric consistency maintained across all three interface states, where each circular element occupies identical dimensional relationships regardless of its illumination status. The designer demonstrates sophisticated understanding of figure-ground dynamics, allowing users to perceive both the positive pattern of lit dots forming numerals and the underlying grid structure that provides spatial orientation. Thematic exploration centers on the democratization of time-reading through universal visual language, the dot patterns functioning as a kind of designed braille visible to the sighted eye. The amber typography in the alarm interface provides elegant contrast against the red dot field while maintaining readability and establishing clear information hierarchy. One might consider how this work participates in broader conversations about interface poetry, where functional software transcends mere utility to offer moments of visual contemplation within the flow of daily device interaction.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Dominus Plus is an application which turns iPad or iPhone into a stylishly artistic, powerfully aesthetic clock which looks like it’s come from a classic sci-fi movie.
It is had an original and artistic design presenting the actual 21st century Face of Time. It is designed in a beautiful symbiosis with Apple portable devices' cases. It has a simple and elegant interface with only a few necessary words to operate it. Different methods of time presentation (clock, alarm, timer) can relax and make the perception of consumers more flexible.
I would like Dominus, apart from providing the pleasure from deciphering the time "anew", to inspire reflection and bring in a contribution to the culture discourse on transformations of reality towards "immaterializing (diffusing) things", that is digitalizing them. The effect of such a transformation are low production, distribution and storing costs. Thus, when the Face of Dominus time stops being adequate or ceases to please, it shall be effaced from the memory of both devices and users without producing waste.
http://www.dominus.mobi - Tags
- Clock, App, Time, Alarm, Timer, Design, Art, Sci-fi, Apple
- Operation Flow
- Dominus expresses time in an original way. Like dots on dominoe pieces three groups of dots represent: hours, tens of minutes and minutes. The flashing line reflects the flow of seconds. The time of day can be read from the color of the dots: green for AM; yellow for PM. This new abstract drawing of the Face of Time makes devices and interiors where it appears more attractive and mysterious and the image of Time looks well both vertically and horizontally. The application contains a timer, an alarm clock and chimes. Setting both the alarm clock and the timer is easily done by merely highlighting the desired number of dots and tapping the triangle button. The original solution of the clock is instant timer setup with just 2 clicks. All functions are navigable by touching discrete corner dots.
- Inspiration
- http://www.tokyoflash.com
Colors of Dominus plus Clock application.
Get Dominus plus Clock application.
Award-Winning Interface and Digital Design
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G0E3 ShopDesign Interview about Dominus plus Clock application.
All my life I dreamt about designing my own clock. Thanks to Apple my dreams come true.
My idea was to design something having a lot to do with ”digital matter”, with simple interface. Of course I also wanted to do something beautiful for everyday use.
I am going to develop Dominus for other platforms such as Android, Windows Phone, Pebbe and Mac.
I think it was growing for a few years and when the time came I drew it in an hour. Production, ergonomics and software adjustment took months.
My inspiration was www.tokyoflash.com where i saw many original clocks. It encouraged me to realize one on my own.
I designed it for myself hoping that other people will find it useful and that they will like it. They could support or reward my work with symbolic one dollar, which will help me realize my other dreams.
I don’t really know - maybe my principle which is to make things as simple as possible.
Yes. I like (have and wear) Lexon e8 watch from which i learnt that showing time could be smart and nice.
Everyone who is looking for something new and likes sci-fi stuff - are they people from the Future?
Most clock apps look like real clocks from the past (analogue clock, dixie, LCD matrix, flip) primarily designed for circle or square frame. Only a few apps try to adjust their design to ”digital matter” of applications and be proper for the mobile devices framework.
Dominus is a game about time so its name originates from the Dominoe game.
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Soundtrack PRO and iOS device simulator.
I think that it is the simple albeit not obvious comparison of AM and PM times to fruits. Green color corrensponds to time that is growing and yellow corresponds to the time that is already "mature".
Łukasz Grzejek composed alarm tunes which took inspiration form American Beauty, he tried to make them apt for everyday use. Łukasz Hostyński and Robert Hnatyk from Concise Software did an excellent programming job. Thanks to them submission process was fast and smooth.
Technology made this project possible - especially touch screen technology - it opens new field which enables us to design interactive reaction of ”digital things”.
The project is based on my own iTunes Store research with conclusion that there are more than 2000 clock apps and most of them are ugly or imitative and only a few are nice and original. Because we live in the 21st century I think that apps could become something different from typical "textual menu" programs, on the contrary, they should explore new forms of interfaces and interaction with people.
The most important challenge was raising funds. I gathered money for many months, doing some rather not satisfactory jobs. But it was worth it.
I thaught that Dominus plus was a cool clock and that’s why I decided to find out what professionals think about such a new thing, do they like it as I am?
I went through the whole process - from idea, through concept drawing, programming production, tests and improvements, than - iStore submission, choosing the name and identification, and last but not least - constructing webpage, writing promotion texts for portals and magazines. That's how I discovered that design is only 10% of the product and you must really believe in it and be patient. It was an important lesson.
Now there are more than 2000 people using Dominus plus and this is my greatest reward. It satisfies me. Thanks to them I feel like doing more apps.
Grand Interview about Dominus plus Clock application.
I wanted to visualize Time differently than global companies such as Apple have done so far - imposing a functional standard of readability and an impersonal style of visualizing time on recipients. Time is something personally unique to me. The pioneers in the field of personal visualization of Time were Kisai (Tokyoflash) and Nooka. The design spirit in these two companies encouraged me to search for and select my own - personal - development. Since the project was intended for mobile devices with iOS, its basis and point of reference was the iPhone and iPad screen. The basic value of the digital matter of the screen is a pixel, so I thought about abstracting it and scaling it to a circle. This resulted in the invention of structures that could represent mental representations of numbers, which are the basis for reading clocks and thinking about time. I made an intuitive decision to encode pairs of numbers in the form of 3 groups of characters. The first character encoded the hours and contained a graphic representing the numbers from 1 to 12. The second character encoded the tens of minutes from 0 to 50. The third character encoded the value of minutes from 0 to 9. Under the hour I placed a thin flashing line to separate the hours from the minutes as it was in digital clocks in the form of “:” and to emphasize the otherness of the seconds, which seem to be a pulse. The name Dominus Plus is a combination of the words DO, MINUS and PLUS to express the passing of Time, which in my opinion brings a loss and at the same time seeing a benefit in this loss. In this, in my recognition of the passing of Time, the essence of life is contained.
Wondering whether Time could have "its own" color, I decided to introduce two colors, green and gold. I assigned them two separate values of time experienced by a person: AM for youth and PM for maturity. The colors change at noon and midnight, marking two moments - birth and growth, and maturity and decline and end. If the clock were used by a person who was colorblind, the AM designation in the form of a small dot lights up on the left side of the screen, and the PM designation appears on the right side of the screen.
The decision to choose corner navigation was dictated by the fact that in the central part of the screen, the user can adjust the brightness of the screen in the TIME view and perform settings in the TIMER, ALARM and SETTINGS views. Thanks to this solution, touch functionality was preserved, which was variable depending on the view.
I have not conducted any research or surveys in this area, so I have no knowledge on the subject. Undoubtedly, the award for this visualization of time introduced a certain issue of possible change in the jury and users of the Dominus application and became a sign of "Different thinking", enriching the culture.
The uniqueness and convenience of the Dominus Plus application was recognized and appreciated by the Jury of experts of the A Design Award competition. The simplicity of the interface allows you to use it practically without reading the instructions. Thanks to this, we have the opportunity to experience an unusual way of interaction and to commune with abstract visualizations from the future. The application stimulates a different type of perception and thinking - I think this is priceless.
The correct symbiosis of the Dominus Plus project with Apple devices required research and understanding of the advantages of a specific device, such as screen size, bezel thickness and device scale. This knowledge can be compared to the feeling of a painting's canvas and its frame, on which the painting will be created. In this case, the canvas is glass and the paint is light. Decisions regarding the proportions and placement of interface elements respect the edge and mass of the digital stretcher.
I transferred the design decision regarding the visualization of TIME in the form of characters built from groups of dots to the TIMER and ALARM functions. Each function required a different solution for the arrangement of dots, e.g. the TIMER interface is built from 60 dots grouped into 6 rows of 10 dots, representing 60 minutes. A grid of dots arranged in this way allows you to set a decent time interval with one touch. And after starting TIMER, it allows you to observe the passing time. This visualization evokes in me the association of observing an hourglass, but in Dominus these are luminous circles disappearing in a digital matrix.
Answering this question after 12 years, my perspective on this issue has evolved. Electronic devices such as iPhone and iPad serve recipients to "save" (exploit) time, but for producers they serve to earn on the growing offer of digital goods. So we perform actions on these devices faster and more, and we spend the "saved" time on consuming even more digital goods. People do not have the space and time to experience and contemplate projects such as Dominus plus on mobile devices.
It is worth answering the question of what is behind my creative motivation. Am I driven by the desire to earn money or am I interested in exploring the meaning and artistic values? The first indicates a mainstream audience, the second is directed towards a niche of enthusiasts, intellectually and aesthetically awakened, of whom there is a permille in the population.
I tested the Dominus project only on myself. I chose the most efficient and visually intriguing solution. The finished product was used by recipients, but because I value privacy, I did not use tracking modules from which I could learn about the effectiveness of this solution.