I’ve just received my Mudita Harmony yesterday and I want to share some first impressions from my not so personal view, as I am also a UX designer and can’t test products without UX in mind
Unboxing was just like unpacking a product from Apple, I really liked the packaging and how beautiful everything was put together. I couldn’t wait to turn the Harmony on, so I plugged in my own USB-C cable (I don’t need another one from any company), so thanks for not putting in a charging brick! It immediately turned on and was ready to use, although 3 hours of charging are suggested.
The first thing I do is always to look for new updates. Downloading Mudita Center for macOS was easy, as well as the app recognizing the Harmony. An update was available, I started it and it took a while until the Harmony itself showed feedback, even though the update was already in progress. So there could be some improvements to show feedback from the Harmony right after starting the process of updating. It took longer than I expected, but everything was fine.
After all of this, I started setting my preferences, time, language etc. The usability with the three buttons on top seems intuitive, but sometimes I pressed the wrong buttons, maybe out of habit with my old alarm clock
And now to the most important stuff: Daily usage!
I love the fact that for setting the alarm, you just need to turn the middle knob on top. It’s simple and it works! But it seems that you can’t set any other stuff with it (without to go the settings), here’s examples:
1. When the light is turned on, sometimes in the night the light is too bright or too dark and to dim or brighten it, I need to go to settings. This is kind of stressful in the middle of the night with half closed eyes! So instead, I wished there was a shortcut to this. Either by long pressing the light button or by turning the knob, as soon as the light is turned on (with this, setting the alarm by turning the knob is deactivated).
2. When the pre-alarm tone is activated, for example 15 minutes before the actual alarm, it’s not possible to turn the volume of these tones up or down. What happened this morning was, that the volume was way too loud and I (with closed eyes) tried to turn it down with the knob. But instead, I changed the actual alarm time. This could be tricky for people, who really need to wake up on time! Suggestion: When the pre-alarm tones start, deactivate the option to directly change the alarm with the knob, but instead change the volume with it.
Meditation: The settings show a delay timer and in German, the word for “second” and “seconds” is not “zweite” and “zweites”, but “Sekunde” and “Sekunden”
Also, how do I stop a meditation, when the delay is in progress? The back button or any other one won’t work during that time. The chime (“Intervallschall” is a strange word in German, better use" Glocken-Intervall" or “Klang-Intervall”) is quite useful, thank you for that! But I noticed that it’s a bit too high-pitched for my personal preference and cut off right at the end, which interrupted my mind sometimes. Please let the chime fade out and give it one or two more seconds to end
Relaxation: I just used it once until now, but I noticed that “Nature’s Harmony” has some kind of windy background noises. I know, it’s personal preference again, but mostly it sounded like a highway and was kind of disturbing and nothing like Harmony for me.
These are the things I noticed after one day. I will try to update this post and I am looking forward to using the Harmony every day and night from now on.
Thank you Mudita!
Update: Is it possible to keep the light activated, e.g. as a reading lamp?