My name’s Francesca and I have a problem handling notifications. I suffer from compulsive swiping to the right, with the result that news and reminders disappear from my field of vision, which in turn means that I’m always forgetting all sorts of stuff.
Did we postpone the aperitif by a day? Has Cri already bought Adriano’s present? Do I have an appointment at the hairdresser’s in four hours’ time? Who knows.
Obviously this is a problem that predates the digital age - at least in my case: the unpredictability that goes with the swiping action has its forerunner in “I’ll write it on this Post-it and get it done straight away”. And did you ever? Probably not. And in the meantime three birthdays have gone by, yours and Marco’s, and he's still waiting for you to confirm so he can book the restaurant.
As always these days, the solution comes from Japan. After Marie Kondo teaching us to declutter our lives, here’s Kosho Tsuboi, a product designer with decades of experience, who has also lived as an apprentice in a Zen temple. Now he has proposed a new product to Android Experiments Japan… a wall calendar.
Is your Google Calendar starting to look worried? Tell it to calm down: Tsuboi’s Magic Calendar is designed for cooperation and working together. It has a discreet, anti-reflective display that mimics paper but has all the advantages of digital, including the ability to sync with the Google calendar via the app.
Every appointment added to the mobile version is instantly transferred and viewed on the display, even when you’re not at home. Each task has a different colour and you can choose the viewing format you prefer each time, ensuring your engagements are always under control.
Magic Calendar is still in the prototype phase, but Kosho Tsuboi’s plans include making it possible to share with family members and colleagues, making it easier to organise your week and avoid buying cinema tickets for the same evening when Mum’s cooking lasagne and has invited the aunts and uncles round.
Change of plan? No worries: the e-ink uses battery power only when appointments are updated, but doesn’t need it to show the same content statically, unlike an LCD display.
Those among your colleagues who are secretly nostalgic for paper might lay down their resistance, and maybe even your girlfriend, when she realises that Magic Calendar has none of the drawbacks of the blackboard - which looks very pretty on Pinterest, it’s true, but then who has to clean up all that chalk dust?
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