No Monday morning agony next week because of the Easter holiday. But maybe the feeling of getting to work again hits even harder on Tuesday. That is, not for those who would have been woken up by Lolzzz.
Lolzz is the outcome of a small challenge a team of design agency IDEO took up in collaboration with Studio 360 in the US to bring some joy to Monday mornings. We did a post on it last month. Now the result of that endeavour has been put on a microsite, presenting three concepts, that already on first sight trigger a smile.
Lolzzz is an alarm clock that wakes you gently with a child’s joyful laughter. As it giggles, Lolzzz rocks back and forth with delight and you can make it laugh even louder by tickling its belly button. Every week Lolzzz features a new laugh—a little surprise to look forward to on Monday morning.
The idea is to couple the alarm clock to a website where people can submit their own laugh and to brighten things up even further the clock is designed to email the story of that week’s laughter just in time for the Monday morning commute. As the designers say, ‘you get a shot of joy when you wake up, and just when you need it most, you get a booster.’
Sincerely
The second concept, Sincerely, consists of an app that will prompt you to record a simple ‘thank you’ message to someone you care about on Sunday nights. The idea is that you’ll receive a loving message back on Monday morning that will make your day. To make it even more special the message reaches your ears through a bluetooth version of the tin can-and-string phones children have used for decades to share secret messages. When a message is received it wiggles with its antenna tail.
PopUp
Thirdly, PopUp is a more joyfully designed calendar app that draws attention to the hidden or overlooked opportunities for joy behind meetings. It may for instance point out a point of interest or a piece of art in the vicinity of the meeting. The app also comes up with a device to replace the beeping and blinking calendar notifications: an object that blows a bubble when you need a calendar warning.