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An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

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Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#41

Post by Kluny »

cpeterso wrote: post #37

I don't want my alarm clock to annoy me. I just want it to wake up. I'd like an alarm with a gentler, pulsing sound that only gets louder or more annoying if you don't get up soon. I found an Android alarm app that tried to wake you when you're in a shallow sleep phase. IIRC, the app would quietly ring 45, 30, and 15 minutes before the wake time you set, so if you happened to be in a shallower sleep phase then you wo…

I was thinking the same thing. I don't want to wake up angry. When someone figures out a way to wake me up that feels like being gently kissed by a loved one, prodded by a dog, or the smell of frying bacon and fresh coffee, then they'll really have something.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#42

Post by jenamety »

dfsegoat wrote: post #15
tome wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting! And now and off-topic question: why would rolling right stop a plane from going in the sea?

Not a pilot or engineer - but I imagine if the plane were in a "banked left" position (prolonged left roll) where altitude was being lost because of "slip" - then rolling right would restore lift / level flight http://2bfly.com/assets/slipinbank21.png

likely just trying to get wings level. Likely triggered due to the high bank angle plus low altitude.

PDF Warning: Page 121 - Aerodynamic Forces in Flight Maneuvers

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#43

Post by busterarm »

throwanem wrote: post #38
busterarm wrote: post #31

I'm notoriously bad about sleeping through alarms. I used to have to use 4 at a time. The two most effective things that I've done to wake myself are: a) I had my computer play a song with a high BPM at 100% volume on repeat starting on a timer. Shutting it off required typing a few commands to kill the process. This was effective for a while until I started sleeping through it too. b) What I do now is I have a cheap…

Consider the bugle call "Reveille" [1], which has a long history of being used to wake the potentially recalcitrant. I've used it as a wake alarm for several years now, replacing the classic iOS "Alarm" tone that I used to use - "Reveille" is considerably less jarring, but I've found it much more effective in producing a transition from sleep to wakefulness that doesn't include the shock produced by something like "A…

I'm familiar. :)

I'm a heavy sleeper _and_ a dawdler though. The radio thing has the extra effect of motivating me to get out as quickly as possible.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#44

Post by CaptSpify »

dmckeon wrote: post #28

A environment of multiple, repeating alarms - whether "Stall!" in a cockpit every 3 seconds, or a hospital room with multiple beeps, with only 8 of 1455 especially significant, sounds to me to be like being a programmer trying to fix a critical problem with a PHB manager hovering at one's shoulder, barking "Another server crashed" and "Have you fixed it yet?" and similar several times a minute. Perhaps such environme…

I wonder how much of this is "false alarms" as well. At my office, we had our disk-alert thresholds way too low for a while. Our intent was good: "If someone sees this and aren't busy, they'll jump on it when they get time". But that just meant that everyone ignored the alert until it was too late. Now, you don't want the threshold too high either, you have to find a balance.

signal-to-noise is hard.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#45

Post by throwanem »

busterarm wrote: post #43
throwanem wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the bugle call "Reveille" [1], which has a long history of being used to wake the potentially recalcitrant. I've used it as a wake alarm for several years now, replacing the classic iOS "Alarm" tone that I used to use - "Reveille" is considerably less jarring, but I've found it much more effective in producing a transition from sleep to wakefulness that doesn't include the shock produced by something like "A…

I'm familiar. :) I'm a heavy sleeper _and_ a dawdler though. The radio thing has the extra effect of motivating me to get out as quickly as possible.

Interesting point. I tend to dawdle in the morning a bit as well, but haven't really put a lot of thought into adjusting that.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#46

Post by degenerate »

raamdev wrote: post #18

I discovered when I was in my late teens that given a week or two of the same daily alarm, my subconscious would eventually recognize the sound as my alarm and I'd get up, walk across the room, turn it off, go back to sleep and wake up an hour or two later with absolutely no recollection of turning it off. I eventually discovered that using my phone as an alarm, with my call ringtone as the alarm sound, was the only…

Certain apps curtail the "turning alarm off and going back to sleep without realizing it" problem.

Sleep as Android has a feature where you need to perform a conscious task (math problem / tap on X jumping sheep / etc). Sure you might still solve the math problem and go back to sleep, but there is no doing multi-operational math subconsciously. You're going to know you are awake and will remember.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#48

Post by lostlogin »

dmckeon wrote: post #28

A environment of multiple, repeating alarms - whether "Stall!" in a cockpit every 3 seconds, or a hospital room with multiple beeps, with only 8 of 1455 especially significant, sounds to me to be like being a programmer trying to fix a critical problem with a PHB manager hovering at one's shoulder, barking "Another server crashed" and "Have you fixed it yet?" and similar several times a minute. Perhaps such environme…

Patient monitors have a "silence" button. Next time you are near one, have a look at the water patterns, as they are often well used.

Re: An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways

#49

Post by lostlogin »

beart wrote: post #36
sumoboy wrote: post #10

Hospital monitors beeping all the time are so annoying, stressful. Last visit I just turned off the machine I was annoyed.

The last time I was in the hospital, the sound was only really ever used when the nurse or doctor was present in the room. It allowed them to monitor the status of the patient without having to stare at a display. All other times, the sound was typically turned way down or even muted as they were monitoring an independent readout in another room.

Good units don't just squawk out a beep, they fade in and out and have an inoffensive tone. The pitch changes with increasing/decreasing heart rate. These ones are good and the others need to die.
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