Hasta La Ideas

The round form of the clock is certainly one of the earliest forms of information visualization. Going back to the sundial and perhaps earlier, the form hasn’t changed much over the millennia: show time as a circle, reflecting the revolving nature of the sun’s rotation around the earth.

But there are certainly other ways to think about time, each with their own purpose. There’s of course the classic sand timer, which visualizes time as a finite, one-way event; it’s perfect for board games and timed scenarios. And there’s the binary clock: its dots create an arrangement signaling to others that you’re probably a programmer or math lover. My favorite are the Roman fasti, lists of events organized by time.

Enter NOOKA’s new iPhone app, which features a host of alternative visualizations for time. The full-fledged app includes a number of face designs from their popular product line, with playful names like “zot,” “zenh” and “zirc.” Each takes a different approach to showing time, from boxes and dots to a circle that represents hours and a line that represents minutes. Useful for world travelers is a world clock that displays multiple time zones intuitively in a single way.

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