A Modern Traditional Chinese Clock Design

[ParkeNYU]

I have developed a custom watch face for the WatchMaker app based on traditional Chinese timekeeping, in which the hours (大時) were divided into 'beginning' (初) and 'central' (正) halves (小時). I refer to this particular design as a qibiao (棋錶), as the watch face resembles a Chinese Chess piece. Each Chinese hour is visually divided into segments that mirror the phases of the moon (i.e. 時初 as 朔月, 時初半 as 上弦月, 時正 as 望月, and 時正半 as 下弦月) and align perfectly with the minute angles of modern clocks (i.e. 0° as :00, 90° as :15, 180° as :30, and 270° as :45). More simply stated, the minute ring builds up sixty minutes to the center of the hour and then reduces back down another sixty minutes to the initial position. The hues chosen are exactly 30° apart on the RGBCMY colour wheel and echo the time of day. Both Tang (子時=23:00-00:59) and Song (子時=00:00-01:59) alignments are available.

 

Qibiao Tang: http://dk2dv4ezy246u.cloudfront.net/share/BynFjyVim.watch

 

Qibiao Song: http://dk2dv4ezy246u.cloudfront.net/share/ryk6i14sm.watch

 

1) Open the WatchMaker apps on your paired mobile phone and smartwatch after downloading them for free.

 

2) Tap the three stacked dots ( ⋮ ) in the top-right corner of the mobile app's main page, then tap 'Import Watch', and finally tap 'IMPORT FROM URL'.

 

3) Copy and paste one of the above URLs into the prompt's text field and tap 'OK'.

 

4) Tap the bottom-right clock icon in the mobile app's control panel (My Watches) and then tap the newly imported watch's tile in the watch gallery (it shows a sample of 10:11 with the watche's name beneath it).

 

5) Click on the lime green icon near the center to the right ('Send to Watch').

 

6) In the watch app's watch face selection screen, tap on the grey cloud-download icon at the top to the right, and then tap 'OK' when it gives you the six-digit code.

 

7) Make sure this six-digit code matches the one in the mobile app's 'Send to Watch' prompt, and then tap 'SEND' on the mobile app.

 

Voila.

 

 

 

[陳德聰]

This appeals to me.

[Shelley]

Am I right in thinking that you are also using the 2 hour time section as used in Chinese time keeping? It looks like it to me if you take one of the characters in the middle it remains there for 2 complete revolutions of the coloured segments one as the colour counts up as it were and then counts down to black again.

 

I hope I have explained this well enough.

 

This appeals to me if I have it right.

 

When you say the colour echos the time of day do you mean as in dark colours for night and light for day etc?

 

When you say its difficult to distinguish some times from a distance, if its a watch it won't be more than an arms length away, is this too far?

 

Overall I really like it.

 

 

[陳德聰]

@Shelley Excuse my as-always crude image editing skills, but I believe that the idea is that it would be visually difficult to tell the difference between the following two time positions without taking a closer look than a glance:

 

 vs 

[Shelley]

Ah yes I see now. (and its not too crude)

 

Thank you

[Shelley]

Maybe if the left hand edge of each segment was a thin white line or much paler shade of the original colour then you would know which side it was on. Its just an idea and I can't try it out so it is only something I can imagine so it might be rubbish.

[陳德聰]

 aaaaaand 

 

 

I think you would only need such a signal on the head or tail of the counter. When it is counting up from 0 it would be on the head segment and when counting the second half, it would just need to be on the tail. Though it isn't really necessary at all when you get closer to the middle of the first half or the middle of the second half...

[Shelley]

Yes, exactly, with a bit of refinement, that is clear enough to me.

 

I think we've cracked it:)

 

Wonder what @ParkeNYU thinks of our genius idea

 

[ParkeNYU]

Shelley, you have it exactly right. I am using the traditional Chinese hours, each worth two modern hours. The minutes count up to the hour's 'center' and then back down to the beginning of the next hour. This allows us to continue counting minutes in exactly the same way as we always have on a typical clock, and thus, the only learning curve involves mastering those twelve characters and their time assignments. I personally prefer the Song Dynasty's realignment, since it feels more evenly distributed, but I do recognise the popularity of the Tang Dynasty's alignment. It's only a 60-minute difference anyway—not a big deal—and both will be available.

 

Thank you both for your feedback, and I do like the idea of adding a thin white line to clarify exactly where the current minute is. Fortunately, a fair amount of smartwatches have ticks and notches engraved around the circumference of the screen, which should disambiguate the exact positions of the minute tiles anyway. I would definitely like to add this feature to the program, even if only as an option in the settings.

 

As far as the colours are concerned, the difference is only hue, since brightness and saturation can readily change based on the settings of the smartwatch software itself (and also the unique characteristics of the display panel in extreme cases); changes in brightness are most likely to occur when the smartwatch is low on battery or has a power-saving feature enabled. Besides, the colour feature is only an optional aesthetic choice—not necessary for timekeeping. I chose evenly spaced colours based on my subjective interpretation of which hues go best with which times of day, all while keeping them exactly the same distance apart from one another for maximum discernibility.

 

If you look closely, the exact minute should be clear anyway. Of the two possible ambiguities, one is 2 minutes apart (:059 versus :061) and one is nearly two hours apart (:119 versus :001). If there's any confusion, one can just look a little more closely, use the engraved markers around the watch, or press a function key on the side (or tap) to reveal a 00:00:00 digital display (with seconds added as a courtesy). I don't have all that info on the main watch face because, for one, the design would look too aesthetically busy, and two, it's easier to save battery life on an (AM)OLED screen with more black space. Besides, this design is intended to be a more loose and relaxed means of time keeping—something you see when you glance at your watch to get a general feel of what time it is. For precise time keeping, a 00:00:00 display would be better anyway, but we don't always need immediate access to such precise times.

[Jim]

Could the outermost ring  "underneath" the blue border revealed by the moving indicator have a colour gradient that steadily changes as it advances but is starkly contrasted at the top where the hour turns? I have zero image skills so hope that makes sense.

[imron]

16 hours ago, ParkeNYU said:

I am developing a custom watch face for circular smartwatches

So no Apple Watch?

[Shelley]

Thinking about this while falling asleep last night I thought it would be nice to have the date and day, the 2 week name such Big Cold, Little Cold etc. which Branch and stem, and the year according to the usual calendar, all available by incrementally clicking through the choices.

 

This could be shown in the centre with out losing the ticking minutes round the edge and it would revert to the standard view after a short length of time, possibly set by the user or fixed depending on what would seem useful.

 

A further refinement could be the addition of major holiday notification.

 

This might just be going in the wrong direction for you and needlessly complicating things but I would like one with all these features:)

[ParkeNYU]

A colour gradient sounds like a fine idea, too.

 

As for dates and other info, I'm not against it but it should be on a 'second page' that you access by pressing a function key or tapping/holding the display. For the basic view, I think it should be as minimal as possible.

 

Apple Watch? I'm fine with that but it won't look as good. I also don't know how to program for iOS (or even Android)...

 

Speaking of which, any of you folks programmers??

[imron]

1 hour ago, ParkeNYU said:

Speaking of which, any of you folks programmers??

Yes

[ParkeNYU]

Well, there's this: https://developer.samsung.com/galaxy-watch/design/watch-designer

 

If only I actually owned one...

 

Is there an affordable smartwatch that allows this kind of thing? I can import...

[Hofmann]

Interesting idea. I can help you with Android if you don't mind having very low priority.

[imron]

8 hours ago, ParkeNYU said:

Well, there's this

Is this what you are currently using to design the watch face?

 

If not, how are you currently going about doing it?

[imron]

On 9/19/2018 at 4:08 PM, imron said:

So no Apple Watch?

Turns out Apple doesn't allow third party watch faces, and neither will it approve third-party apps that mimic watch faces.  Although it's rumored they will add them soon.

 

So in answer to my question, no.  No Apple Watch.

[ParkeNYU]

No Apple Watch? Bummer... Well, it did take Apple a long time to approve third-party IMEs too.

 

I used Affinity Designer to design that proof-of-concept. I need to learn how to use Samsung's design environment, but I have nothing to test it with yet.

 

Hofmann, help with an Android version would be stellar. I'd be grateful whenever you manage to find the time to work on it (I think my idea is pretty self-explanatory, no need for big proposal documents). I don't own an android device, though, just a Mac OS X El Capitan, Windows 10, and an iPhone 5 with iOS 10.3.3.

[ParkeNYU]

I finally made this watch on the WatchMaker app, and I hear rumblings that it's now compatible with Apple Watch. I decided to name it Qibiao (棋錶) since my friend pointed out that it resembles a Chinese Chess piece. It currently runs on Song alignment (子時, the first hour of the new day, begins at 00:00), although it would be easy to adjust it for Tang alignment (one hour transposed backwards).

 

I don't know quite how it works for Apple Watch or even Samsung watches, but for anyone with Android Wear (now Wear OS), it should be very easy to install.