First impressions of Mudita Harmony from a UX designer

Mudita Products
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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 :wink:

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 :wink:

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” :slight_smile:
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 :slight_smile:

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?

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Hi @anon43783341 thank you for sharing your thoughts on Harmony. Your feedback is very important and we’ll surely take a closer look at mentioned issues. We’d love to hear more so keep updating us as you use Harmony.

For now it’s not possible to keep the light activated, we are considering to introduce a function to keep the light for a longer period of time. What is holding us back is the concerns about battery life. Something we’ll surely work on in the future.

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Thank you for your reply @aleksandra!
Battery wouldn’t be an issue with me with the light, as it’s close to a cable anyway. And I’ve read it’s possible with the Bell, so maybe just add the option to keep it turned on (maybe tapping the light button twice or so). Thank you!

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@anon43783341 Thank you for taking the time to send us your feedback. Regarding the translation- I believe that we had this professionally translated. I have to admit, I just stuck it in Google Translate & I can’t see the difference. As someone who translated from ENG>>PL, I know words carry a huge meaning, so I’m just super interested in the difference.

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Wow, really, that can’t be a good translator! I am sorry to say that…
“zweite” and “zweiter” means 2nd, it’s a numeral.
“Sekunde” (Singular) and “Sekunden” (Plural) is just the nouns for “one second” and “two seconds”

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Thank you for that explanation. Having studied German in college, I thought that “zweite” looked familiar. Your explanation reminded me of the numeric sequence “einz, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, …”.

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@anon43783341 Thank you for the clarification. It’s been passed on to the team.

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Update: TLDR: The pre-wake up and snooze settings are pretty hidden in the settings, and the menu structure seems a bit redundant at that point. Also, the pre-wake up is being disabled, when changing the main alarm time, right?

So, there’s your menu:

  • Alarm → Main Alarm → Time setting
    …
  • Settings → Alarm → Pre-wake up, Main alarm, Snooze

First: My suggestion is to put everything into the first menu item “Alarm”, because the knob already sets the main alarm time on the front. If anyone ever needs to set the alarm from within the menu, you could just go there from “Main Alarm”. Or does this have a special reason? :blush:

It could look like this:
Alarm → Pre-wake up → Chime Intervall
…-> Main Alarm → Time, Tone
…-> Snooze → On (minutes); Off

Second: At the moment it’s not clearly visible, if the pre-wake up is set or not. Maybe some indicator on the front could solve that? Also, why cancel the pre-wake up, when changing the main alarm time?

Thanks! :raised_hands:

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hi @anon43783341 Yes, the aspects you ask about do have a specific reason why they are the way they are.
Setting alarm time is a very basic feature that is often used everyday. This is why this is a first thing in the menu - quick access to full time set up within few clicks. Most of the time users just want to change the time depending on day of the week. Some users signalised they’d like to quickly adjust time e.g. 10 minutes earlier on some occasions. This is why there is a quick alarm change function from the main screen, available by rotating and confirming by light click. This is however not convenient if you want to change time from 6:00 to 9:00. We had two separate user cases that we wanted to adres.
Alarm settings on the other hand is something users tend to change way less often. Usually once they pick the suitable configuration they stick with it for a while. This include pre-wake up, main alarm and snooze settings. All of them have few parameters so they naturally needed to be separated as it is right now. Putting it in settings divides features like sounds, light and intervals from very basic and most important thing which is alarm time. It is still only one more click away, but the alarm time setting is kept in the most simple way. All the alarm settings are kept the same way, regardless of changing the time.

Our main principle for the main screen is readability, which is not as simple to achieve as one might think with small e ink display. The biggest priority is ofc current time but there also is alarm time and battery indicator. We have informations that there are requests to improve readability rather than add informations which will take more space from main screen. Pre-wake up, along with snoozes and bedtime reminder has however lower priority than other basic information, this is why it’s currently not displayed on main screen.
These are of course just the reasons behind the current situation. We are really grateful for your comments and we’ll surely think of ways to implement those great ideas along with other user needs that we are aware of and basic product principles. Hope these informations will help you understand the reasonings behind this product a bit more. Thank you!

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I already opened a support ticket, but I wanted to post it here as well:
The Harmony loses almost 10% battery per hour, and after having lost the full battery, it does a factory reset. Even the update 1.7 is set back to 1.6. It’s not reliable at the moment and I’m using my old alarm again.

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@anon43783341 We’re sorry that you’re experiencing problems. This is unusual. It shouldn’t be like this. I believe you will receive a replacement device.

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This quick start does probably get everyone who ordered a Mudita Harmony. I have mine w/o issues I must say for about 12+ months and received this email out of the blue on December 9 :slightly_smiling_face:

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@anon43783341 Did you get a response from our customer service team? Did they get everything sorted out for you?

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@sv3np & @anon43783341
The paper Quick Start Guide is included inside each box, with the purchase of Mudita Bell or Mudita Harmony. However, we do understand that many people a very visual & prefer when features are shown via video. That’s why we created the VIDEO Quick Start guides for BOTH Mudita Bell & Mudita Harmony.

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