In case you are using a similar application but it fails to make you want to smash the phone, Microsoft Mimicker Alarm might represent a very effective way to make you become lucid in the morning, in a very short time.

https://youtu.be/VWJyCYkMc3Y

Mimicker Alarm is available in Google Play Store for all those who have a major problem in the morning, before waking up to go to work or to school. Completely free, the program is meant to demonstrate the utility of the computational learning API, Project Oxford. It provides the user with three games to be won before the alarm is stopped, like facial expressions or finding objects in the house of certain colors or to verbalization certain puns.

As you see in the video above, the effort to stop the alarm this way is quite difficult, especially if you consider the fact that at certain hours in the morning you don’t even know your name well.

“Ours is much prettier than the other alarms. You start by canceling or postponing the alarm. If you use snooze to snooze the alarm, you have five minutes to delay the execution of the game. If you cancel, you mute the alarm, but since then you have 30 seconds to solve the challenge. If you fail to this in the mentioned time frame or you have fallen asleep, the alarm will sound again. You have to win one game to stop the alarm. ” says Allison Light, a program manager for Microsoft’s Project Oxford team.

Overall, the whole system seems very well done, and the intention behind it is admirable. However, it remains to be seen how many fill successfully complete the challenges at 6 AM.