Clock Burn-In

Rob,

Pardon me for not addressing your question, but having just posted to
my blog about clocks on appliances (http://designaday.tumblr.com/post/58432215/overclocked
), I have to ask. Is it really beneficial for this particular
appliance to have a clock, and is its use optional?

Best,
Jack

On Nov 10, 2008, at 9:34 AM, Rob Tannen wrote:

> Looking for suggestions to avoid clock burn-in. This is a small
> display on a consumer appliance that displays the time in digit or
> analog format when not in use. We don't want the clock to move
> around (like a screen-saver). What are alternate ways to deal with
> this?

Jack L. Moffett
Interaction Designer
inmedius
412.459.0310 x219
http://www.inmedius.com

Things should be as simple as possible,
but no simpler.

- Albert Einstein

Is it possible to do a slight shift throughout the day? For museum
kiosks we did a pixel range in which we shifted the logo up, down.
left right to minimize burn in. Perhaps this could be done at the
turn of each hour to minimize the visibity of the shift.

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Posted from the new ixda.org
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And please think of all those poor souls who would like to save energy and
turn their appliances off-off when not in use. It's a real pain to put them
all on a powerstrip, so as to be able to turn them all off at night or when
otherwise not in use and be greeted with a forest of blinking lights when
flipping the switch to on again.

Marijke Rijsberman
http://www.interfacility.com
http://landfill.wordpress.com

Going back to the original question:

Rob Tannen wrote:
> displays the time in digit or analog format when not in use.

Does it have to display the time when it's not being used? Could it
display other useful bits of information as well? Could it power off
after a certain amount of inactivity?

It seems like I'm surrounded by things that tell me what time it is (or
might be) but not enough things that tell me useful bits about their
state. My office coffee pot tells me what time it is (or how long
since the last power outage) but what I really *need* it to tell me is
the answer to, "How old is the coffee in the coffee pot?".

--
J. Eric "jet" Townsend, CMU Master of Tangible Interaction Design '09

design: www.allartburns.org; hacking: www.flatline.net; HF: KG6ZVQ
PGP: 0xD0D8C2E8 AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5 F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8

To not address the clock/no clock issue (as it could be specific client
request, etc.)

Assumption here: the appliance is in a fixed location like the kitchen.

Do you have control over the brightness of the display? One option would be
to have a light sensor in the device where you detect the ambient room
lighting. In brightly lit rooms, you could up the brightness of the display
and in dimly lit rooms the probability of use might be lower (again, not
knowing your product or its application) so you could reduce the brightness
level. At least 1/2 the time the room would be dimly lit (at night)

It is, however, an additional part cost as well as EE/embedded SW dev cost.

Cheers,
Lisa

Eeww.

Use case failure: swing shift worker
Use case failure: busy mom, up before dawn
Use case failure: set time after the power comes back on late at
night, zap, display goes dead (this could be worked around, assuming
someone thought about it)

There are also non-use cases surrounding these clocks. I often use
them to guide me in the house without turning on lights (to not wake
up other people, or just because I can), for example.

-- Jim
Via my iPhone

On Nov 11, 2008, at 10:12 AM, Thomas Davies <thomasdavies at me.com> wrote:

> Why don't you actually use the clock information to reduce burn-in?
>
> Surely not many people will be cooking late at night and early in the
> morning. So just do a rough estimate and say not many people will be
> using the cooker between 10pm and 6am, thats an 8 hour period where
> the digital display could be turned off. Obviously if people started
> to use it during this period, the clock would reappear!
>
> I am sure this could be used for different appliances as well.
>
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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> http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=35445
>
>
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I say avoid analogue clocks. People younger than I am are less and
less likely to be able to read an analogue clock. In point of fact. I
have to decipher them.

This means I can't 'read' them. I can figure them out, the same
way I can figure out a word I've never read before. But it takes a
lot more time.

If you simply must have a clock, and it can't move. I'd do any or
all of these things: (some people have already said)

-Alter the color over time.
-Use a font or fonts that activate the widest set of pixels.
-Swap the font around over time.
-Slowly move the clock.

But really... if you want to eliminate burn in entirely.

Just revert the display once a minute. Make the off pixels on, and
the on pixels off. This will prevent burn in, as all the pixels will
get exactly the same amount of wear, and it will also alert the user
that the minute flopped, which is pretty handy if you are timing
something by hand.

This also works with very small displays. If the display is
dot-matrix, this works. Just be careful about the font, text needs to
be thicker to be easily read in revert.

Anyway. That's my 2 cents.
Will

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Posted from the new ixda.org
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True true. But if the clock is always on, those pixels will fail at
the same rate that they would in either case.

So the display will get dimmer over time, rather than show 88:88 dim
with the rest of the screen bright.

It turns illegibility into readable by dark.

So if you take all the other precautions, you'll still see less
burn-in.

But clearly, it isn't a best-case option if you are talking about a
full size display. The other options are best for that. When you talk
about a small display, like you might find on a car stereo, this will
prevent burn-in..

Burn-in being defined as an after-image left behind due to uneven
degradation of the screen.

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Posted from the new ixda.org
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