Resisting the snooze button and waking up early in the morning can be tough. Most of us often hit the snooze button once or twice at least (sometimes it becomes five or six times). But it should not be that way, as the saying “if you snooze, you lose” is actually true.
Addressing this, the team of EPFL Master’s students has come up with an app to make mornings a little easier by adding a touch of humor, or as they say, “turning a terrible morning into a fun morning.” They have developed an app called “Wakeit,” a free alarm clock app powered by social media. Its main target is the Generation Z cohort, for which this kind of online interaction is perfectly natural.
According to Sebastien Savidan, one of the team members, Wakeit is totally different from most alarm-clock apps out there. The new app wakes people up with a selection of stories and photos that open when it’s time to rise and shine. The team has also added features to prevent people from cheating and setting their alarm for the middle of the afternoon so as to get a sneak preview of the following morning’s selection.
There is also an option for users to play a game or resolve a challenge in order to turn off the alarm, he says while explaining about the app.
Additionally, the duo has made their app as customizable as possible, meaning users will eventually be able to add new “Wakies” – the social-media elements that wake people up – to the app every month. The Wakeit team is still finalizing the design and doesn’t want to reveal any more details for now.
“We will program the various wake-up methods ourselves, some of which will incorporate artificial intelligence,” says Savidan. And Bastian Muriel makes one thing perfectly clear, “Our app will not have any ad banners or pop-ups.”
Researchers are using the proceeds to develop a beta version that should be ready for both iOS and Android smartphones in September. The team intends to first offer a free basic version of this app and then charge for additional cookies.
