Interview about TTMM for Pebble watchfaces apps, winner of the A' Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design Award 2017
TTMM is a 130 watchfaces collection dedicated for Pebble 2 smartwatch. Specific models show time and date, week day, steps, activity time, distance, temperature and battery or bluetooth status. User can customize type of information and see extra data after shake. TTMM watchfaces are simple, minimal, aesthetic in design. It is a combination of digits and abstract infographics perfect for a robots era.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsI designed the TTMM for Pebble collection out of pure desire to create for my own pleasure and to discover my creativity. The black and white screen of the Pebble smartwatch was like discovering a new world for me. I can compare it to discovering sheet music and experimenting with what can be depicted on it. The Pebble watch allowed me to compose and visualize my own graphic melodies of time. Harmony, rhythm and flow were important. It was breaking the sound barrier and flying into the future.
Both movies are peppered with small elements of abstract graphical interfaces in spaceship cockpits. In Star Wars Episode IV, in the X-Wing cockpit during the finale of the attack on the Death Star, you can see buttons with dots, circles and lines. These unassociated and unspoken, yet characteristic abstract graphic elements meant something and had their functions. These elements stuck with me and triggered questions "what are these strange buttons for and what do they mean?" And so I decided to create my own designs that I understood and liked to look at.
Tests, trials and improvements. The visual appeal came from treating the watch screen like a postage stamp field or a miniaturized poster that had to convey the content (TIME) quickly and attractively. The limited 1-bit resolution of the Pebble smartwatch screen (144x168 pixels) required a completely new extreme approach to graphic design. Working on the projects resembled creating single-color animated icons from which a significant image emerged. I was most pleased with the micro icons that represented a specific visualization of the dial and which had a size of 24x28 pixels.
This recognition worked by removing all brakes, pressing the gas pedal and fast-forwarding into the unknown. The fuel for my courage was the attitude of two companies that inspired me and encouraged me on this journey: Kisai (Tokyoflash) and Nooka. And my work is a creative transformation of science fiction literature and film, which resulted in bringing the future to the Pebble device.
The challenge was communication and a clear description of how a specific project visualizes time. I tried to predict how a programmer would find it easiest, fastest, and therefore cheapest to program a given solution. I described the positions myself and cut graphic components, which very often took the form of fonts containing repeating elements instead of letters. Thanks to this approach, TTMM projects took up very little memory.
I acted impulsively and explored in practice how additional information (beyond date and time) could be visualized and how such information could interact with time. I added possibilities to personalize the experience to expand the audience of TTMM products. I tested the results of these activities on myself. It was an experiment.
Tests and improvements, and if the design was originally simple, legible and stylistically nice, it was implemented. Someone is always responsible for the final result, which is why I responsibly signed the designs with my name. In my opinion, the work of a designer is subject to special ethics and criticism. Digital products of industrial design can be reproduced in hundreds of thousands or millions of copies. For me, this means duplicating beauty or ugliness, sophistication or vulgarity. Unfortunately, smartwatch manufacturers care about profit and the number of copies sold, not value. They allowed their platforms to be drowned in random and ugly designs created by amateur programmers, irreversibly degenerating the tastes of recipients.
It reminded me of Heraclitus's saying, "You can never enter the same river twice." I understand this saying as the impossibility of repeating the same space-time. I decided to visualize the uniqueness of a unique moment (a second) in the MOMENTTMM project. You can observe this project your whole life and theoretically the same accentuated moment will not repeat itself twice.
Every choice brings the paradoxical result that we do not choose everything else. After 5 years of studies and 10 years of teaching students and working for commercial clients, a suppressed need for my own expression and for signing reality with my vision awoke in me. I decided to take the position of a client towards myself. I assumed that I would create only what I consider good, paying for it the price of responsibility for the success and failure of my work. It was a statistically satisfyingly painful experience - true Responsible Freedom.
I believe that in my lifetime I will be able to design and introduce to the market a design product (hardware) that will make me independent from the uncertain fate of smartwatch manufacturers. This will allow me even greater Freedom and financial independence. It could be a wristwatch or maybe a wall clock. We'll see.
Dive into a world of design excellence with our curated highlights. Each feature showcases outstanding creativity, innovation, and impact from the design world. Discover inspiration and learn more about these incredible achievements.
