Chirpy in the morning
Sam Berkeley • Published 3 Jun 2010 09:10
0 Comments
Share this
WOODPECKER WAKE-UP CALL: The new invention by North Berwick student Natalie Duckett.
The days of the nagging beep of the alarm clock could soon be over thanks to a North Berwick student's revolutionary new design. . . which imitates the sound of a woodpecker.
Natalie Duckett (pictured), 22, of Gilbert Avenue, is in her final year studying product design at Dundee University.
She has come up with an extraordinary device, which has no face or hands, and works by tapping out a rhythm on the nearest surface at a set time.
In the hope of encouraging more regular and healthy sleeping patterns, the woodpecker clock will also sound its call in the evening, precisely nine hours before the morning alarm is due, as a reminder that bedtime is approaching.
Natalie, who starting designing the clock last year for a summer project for her course and completed it this May, said the sudden interest in her device had come as a great shock.
"I had no idea what the response would be, not at all," she said. "The aim of the project is to try and get feedback from the public and I was trying to get myself on design blogs with no success at all.
"Then suddenly it took off, it took a while but then it was overwhelming."
Since then she has been much in demand, appearing on BBC Radio Five Live and receiving attention from myFOX in the USA.
But when Natalie started the project, she never could have imagined such interest, as she tried to design a device which could make that morning wake-up call less painful.
"I was badly jetlagged after coming back from Australia and it just hit home how important sleep is," she said. "I started chatting to people about it and couldn't find anything that could help."
So she took it upon herself to solve the problem, coming up with more than 100 initial designs before eventually settling on the sound of a woodpecker tapping against a tree, after hearing from a friend that she had found the sound soothing to wake up to.
The clock works by using a metal beak to tap out a call reminiscent of a lesser-spotted woodpecker on a nearby object.
The tone of the call changes depending on what type of surface is nearest.
Said Natalie: "I wanted to move away from electronic recording devices to something more natural. It's made from one piece of wood, which I got from cutting a tree trunk in half. It actually took three tree trunks to get to the final one."
The woodpecker clock is on display at the university before Natalie will get it back at the end of the week and use its soothing tones to rise fresh in the mornings.
"My current alarm clock is nowhere near as good as the woodpecker," she said. "I'm just using my mobile phone at the moment."
She would dearly love to launch her product to the masses, with it first appearing at the New Designers festival in London in July.
"I definitely hope to market it but I'm going to play it by ear just now," she said.
"I'm trying to compact it a bit at the moment and I'm just doing it now for the show and we'll see what happens from there."
To find out more about the woodpecker clock, visit Natalie's website at www.natalieduckett.co.uk.
Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our News archives.
