Outside the Box Thinking: Telling Time

Quick, think of a classic clock!

You most likely have pictured a circular disk with a long and short needle-like “hands” mounted at the center that rotate at different speeds around a face with numbers marked on it. The slower rotating short hand points to the number that corresponds to the hour of the day, while the faster rotating long or big hand indicates the number of minutes that have elapsed during the hour.

The form factor of this kind of mechanical clock has been established over centuries. So much so that we use the word clockwise to describe the direction of rotation of any motion that is similar to how a clock’s hands move.

The basic design of a clock has really only been challenged in more recent decades with the advent of digital technology, which replaces the sweeping hands with numbers that change to indicate the time as the minutes and hours tick by. The latest innovation down this line are the so-called smart watches that are little more than miniaturized computers and screens, whose pixels are used to simulate either the sweeping of mechanical clock hands or the ever-changing numbers of a digital clock display when used to indicate the time.

But should our concept of how clocks work be limited to these established designs? We came across two Kickstarter projects featuring unique clockwork mechanisms for watches that rethink how people might go about reading a clock to tell the time. While both projects are still actively funding, with about two weeks left to go, they have both achieved their funding goals, which means the watches will be produced.

The first concept we found interesting is the STRUC Time Shuttle Mechanical Watch. Designed by Hong Kong’s StrucWatches, the watch aims to redefine how to read a clock. The following video presents the design which fits the equivalent of three clocks onto a single watchface, one telling the current time, the other two indicating the time one hour before and one hour into the future:

Putting so much information onto a single clock face makes for a intricate time-reading experience, so when we came across a second clockface redefining watch on Kickstarter, Svalbard’s HX15/HX16 developed by Sergey Kozhukhov, we couldn’t help but be impressed with its greatly simplified presentation that resembles a speedometer gauge. Here’s the video introducing the project:

What makes Kozhukhov’s watch fascinating is its combination of digital-like number to indicate the hour with the mechanical clock’s minute hand that ticks clockwise from 0 to 60 to indicate the elapsed minutes of the hour before sweeping backward to zero at the beginning of a new hour.

The cool thing about both watches is that they’re not just time telling devices, but conversation pieces. Both Kickstarter projects will be funding up until sometime on 6 September 2025.