Timebase

the problem

Every world clock shows the same row of cities and the same offsets. None of them tells you when the people you work with will be awake, or when the thing on your calendar happens in their day.

the approach

A row per city and colour for the hour: a continuous 24-hour gradient carries the time of day, so icons, terminators and offsets could go. One scrub gesture moves every clock at once. Countdowns to the events on your calendar, tinted by the hour where they happen.

what we learned

Colour can carry what labels usually do; once the rows carried the hour, everything else could be removed. Building the iPhone app and the web app as separate, bespoke things was faster than sharing code, and both are better for it.

next

iPad, Mac and watch, each designed on its own, after Shio ships.