It’s tough to always wake up with a smile on your face and a spring in your step – day after day, even on the most annoying and difficult mornings. Most of us have our demons to struggle with, no matter the bedtime or the hour we wake up.
Since this is a universal problem, numerous apps have been developed to help us wake up in unique and efficient ways. Microsoft has also given it a try, and the Mimicker Alarm for Android has the potential to become the most frustrating of them all.
In order for the Mimicker to stop ringing your morning alarm, you have to convince its AI of how awake you are. Microsoft’s new app has taken the road of the “gamified” alarms, which means you’re going to use some of that grey matter of yours to turn off the buzzer.
But don’t worry – it’s nothing too complicated; the games are designed to be just enough that there’s no way you’re going back to bed in the end. At first glance, the Mimicker Alarm games don’t seem to be very different than other apps, offering the user three choices of games that will wake you up.
“Color Capture” is the easiest: you just need to take a photo of an object that matches the random color requested by the app. Your efficiency depends on whether or not you have something of each color in your room, but chances are you will often have to go out and search.
Then there’s “Tongue Twister,” which requires the user to correctly repeat one of those quirky and difficult alliterative sequences of words.
You can’t focus on getting the words right in “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper” and then go back to bed. The app counts on waking you up by making you use your cognitive ability.
And thirdly, there’s the “Express Yourself” game, which means you have to make a face that will match the emotion required by the app. This can be either fun or exasperating, depending on how good you are at expressing emotions you might not feel in the morning.
When you finally get it right, the Mimicker Alarm will allow you to share your morning selfie on social media, but chances are that’s the last thing you want to be doing.
Some heavy computing hides behind these seemingly simple games, using machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computer vision. You can download Mimicker Alarm for free on Android.
Image Source: Gadgets
