Tech For Life

No, it’s not a Finnish battlecry. Nooka is a watch. Actually it’s a whole range of watches. The brainchild of Mr Matthew Waldman. Initially available as part of the Seiko range under license in 1999, the Nooka Zoo was so successful that Matthew took his patent and started his own watch company. The watches that the company now produces are purer and closer to his original vision - good for you Mr. Waldman!

Nooka watches are different. Most of them have no dial, and no digital…er…digits, thus removing the two most usual methods of communicating time. Nooka watches replace these concepts with several interesting, and to my eyes at least, fantastically cool ideas.

First, there is the original ‘Zoo’. Hours are shown in the big window on the lower left, and minutes count up in increments on a long lcd bar at the top. am/pm is shown by 2 dots, one for each, and seconds have their own little window at the bottom. To me, this is the least radical of Matthew’s designs, hours are still shown as a number, as are the seconds. It is the one that started the ball rolling though, so certainly deserves a mention.

Alongside the Zoo, the current range encompases the Zot and the Zen. The Zen is then split into the Zen-H and the Zen-V. The Zot (left) is by far my favourite. Hours are shown by filling in the dots at the top. Far from making things complex, I find the layout amazingly easy and quick to read. I struggled to think why, as it is so very very different to any other time-telling mechanism that I have used, and completely alien to either the analogue face or the digital…er…digits. Then I found this little gem on the Noooka website :

The visual mass increases as time passes, giving weight to an ephemeral and abstract concept

…and I agree. Somehow I need only glance at this layout and I instantly know the time. Minutes build up from left to right in the strip at the bottom, and seconds have a tiny window all of their own at the bottom left, the only ’standard’ representation on the face.

Finally we come to the Zen. This face didn’t gel with me as well as the Zot did, but it’s still great to look at. The Zen-v (right) has three vertical bars on the left. Two fill with hours and one with minutes. The Zen-h is the same, except the bars are horizontal (see the naming pattern?) and fill from left to right. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but neither of these layouts scream the time at me like the Zot does. I am sure that is a completely subjective thing, and Nooka watches are a subject that a room of 5 people will probably have 6 opinions on. This is a great thing. Blandness is the enemy of intelligent conversation.

The best place to get Nooka watches is from the internet, like most great geeky gear. Resellers include Cyberdog, Asos, and streetfusion in the UK, and loads of places in the US of A.