A Clock for Aliens

Marcus T.

Oct 1, 2025

Inspiration

This project is inspired by the myth of the World Turtle—the idea of existence resting on the back of a vast, cosmic creature—and the 2025 city-building game The Wandering Village, where human life adapts to the rhythms of a giant wandering being. Both sources highlight the concept of time and survival shaped by the cycles of something larger than ourselves, which guided the design of this clock as a living, creature-based system of time.

The World Turtle
Onbu from the game 'The Wandering Village'

A Clock for Aliens

Marcus T.

Oct 1, 2025

Inspiration

This project is inspired by the myth of the World Turtle—the idea of existence resting on the back of a vast, cosmic creature—and the 2025 city-building game The Wandering Village, where human life adapts to the rhythms of a giant wandering being. Both sources highlight the concept of time and survival shaped by the cycles of something larger than ourselves, which guided the design of this clock as a living, creature-based system of time.

The World Turtle
Onbu from the game 'The Wandering Village'

Code Breakdown

Figure 8 Track

// Parametric curve + tangent
x = a * sin(t),  y = (b/2) * sin(2t)

function infinityPoint(tau, a, b) {
  const x = a * sin(tau);
  const y = (b * 0.5) * sin(2 * tau);
  const dx = a * cos(tau);
  const dy = b * cos(2 * tau);
  const ang = atan2(dy, dx); // tangent angle
  return { x, y, ang };
}

We draw the track as a polyline (sampled points) and orient all glyphs by rotating to the tangent (rotate(p.ang)).

4-Behaviors

behaviors = [
  { name:'SEASONS', slots:32, period: base * PI * FEEDING_CYCLE, hue:30,  glyph:'chev' },
  { name:'STROKES', slots: 8, period: base * 1.414 * FIN_STROKES, hue:280, glyph:'bar'  },
  { name:'BREATH',  slots:12, period: base * 1.618 * SLOW_BREATH,  hue:205, glyph:'mark' },
  { name:'BLINK',   slots:12, period: base * 2.718,                hue:150, glyph:'eye'  }
];

Seasons = Turtle feeding cycles
Fin Strokes = Distance Measuring
Breath = Religious Timing/Calendar
Blink = Day/Night Cycle

Visual Language

const seasonHue = seasonalHue(seasonCyc); // amber → green → violet → cyan
stroke(seasonHue, …); drawInfinityPolyline(...);

Track Color
Season color slowly shifts via four stops using seasonalHue() and wrap-aware lerpHue():

const seasonHue = seasonalHue(seasonCyc); // amber → green → violet → cyan
stroke(seasonHue, …); drawInfinityPolyline(...);

Track Color
Season color slowly shifts via four stops using seasonalHue() and wrap-aware lerpHue():

A Clock for Aliens

Marcus T.

Oct 1, 2025

Inspiration

This project is inspired by the myth of the World Turtle—the idea of existence resting on the back of a vast, cosmic creature—and the 2025 city-building game The Wandering Village, where human life adapts to the rhythms of a giant wandering being. Both sources highlight the concept of time and survival shaped by the cycles of something larger than ourselves, which guided the design of this clock as a living, creature-based system of time.

The World Turtle
Onbu from the game 'The Wandering Village'

Early Draft

After sharing the first version of my Outlook redesign, I got some great feedback that’s helping me rethink a few key areas. One of the biggest notes was to cut back on overlapping panels—they were crowding the interface and taking away from the clean, focused experience I was aiming for. People also pointed out some redundant information popping up in multiple places, which added to the clutter instead of reducing it. The most exciting piece of feedback, though, was the push to reimagine how relationships between groups are displayed. There’s a real opportunity to move past the usual lists and folders and come up with something more visual and meaningful. It was all great fuel for the next round of design updates.

Final Version

Future Considerations//
Reflections
‍

In the final round of feedback, a lot of the earlier critiques were addressed—I successfully reduced overlapping panels and cut out redundant information wherever it crept in. The new approach to showing groups was also really well received, and I think dropping the old-school ‘VIP’ concept helped make the whole system feel more inclusive and context-aware. One piece of feedback that really stuck with me, though, was a suggestion to reimagine the Focus Mode as something closer to a social media-style feed. The idea is to surface important emails from key groups or favorited contacts in a way that feels more natural and scrollable—something familiar, but tailored for productivity. It’s a direction I hadn’t fully considered before, but it opens up a lot of exciting possibilities for how users might intuitively engage with what matters most.

All things considered, this was a much more enjoyable process than I initially thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, the project interested me from the start, but it wasn't until the push to go further and unshackle myself a bit from UX conventions that I felt like this was something special. This project was a great reminder that even though us designers aren't often seen as people that consider self-expression first when creating, it's great exercise to give ourselves the opportunity to become the client. By just focusing on working out our creativity outside of what's trending, on 'this thing is so ubiquitus it's almost weird that we haven't revisited this', we're opening ourselves up to new ways of lateral thinking.

A Clock for Aliens

Marcus T.

Oct 1, 2025

Inspiration

This project is inspired by the myth of the World Turtle—the idea of existence resting on the back of a vast, cosmic creature—and the 2025 city-building game The Wandering Village, where human life adapts to the rhythms of a giant wandering being. Both sources highlight the concept of time and survival shaped by the cycles of something larger than ourselves, which guided the design of this clock as a living, creature-based system of time.

The World Turtle
Onbu from the game 'The Wandering Village'

Designing experiences that
touch, move, and inspire

HomeHome
AboutAbout
WorksAbout
ServicesServices
BlogBlog
ContactContact