Smart alarms are designed not just to wake you up but also ensure that you don’t repeatedly hit the snooze button; you get out of bed and begin your day.
Microsoft has come up with a smart alarm app called the Mimicker Alarm for lazy ‘snoozers’ like me who just hit snooze, sleep in and rush the process of getting ready and leaving to work! (Of course it does NOT happen to me every day! Er..) Traditional alarms usually give you a snooze or exit alarm option that is pretty easy to just switch off and roll back to sleep. But with the Mimicker Alarm app, you have to play a mini-game or Mimic after the alarm rings and this makes you much active and gets your mind fresh so you don’t go back to sleep again.
What are the mimics you ask me? Right now, there are three. Once you open the app to switch off the alarm you can:
1. Take a selfie according to the instructions
No one likes a bad selfie (especially me!). Once you open this app after the alarm rings, the instructions are pretty clear. Take a selfie with a surprised or a happy or any expression that is asked for and share it within your circle (completely optional). Now, no one likes a sleepy selfie and it’s not like you can click a grumpy one and fool the app, oh no! The app doesn’t leave you till you give it a selfie that corresponds with its requirement. By the time you ‘readjust’ your face and click that selfie, your mind is wide awake and you get to go about your regular chores without delay.
2. Recite a tongue twister
You could opt to say a tough or an easy tongue twister and the app will record your words to see how it sounds. If you’re still half-asleep your words won’t be as clear and the app won’t accept it. So open your eyes wide, freshen your brain, say the tongue twister correctly and go about your day! It wakes up your mind and prevents you from falling back to sleep again!
3. Colour capture
This one is sure to get you out of bed! For this game, you need to click a picture of an object that the app suggests and for this, you need to get up and move. Now, you may have a very colourful room but you still need to get up and find an object of that particular colour for a picture. Getting up and moving about instantly energizes you and gives you the motivation to get ready for the day. If this doesn’t help, I don’t know what will!
The best part about this app is that if you don’t complete the task properly, the alarm keeps ringing again and disturbs your sleep anyway. Rather than getting up so roughly (yikes!) you might as well complete the task properly and begin your day wide-awake and buzzed. In the course of making waking up easier for us, this smart alarm is definitely a step ahead in accomplishing that task. And it’s much more fun and entertaining than alarms that won’t stop till you walk a few steps or alarms that won’t stop till you throw it across the room (yes they exist!).
