Pomodoro Bear, 2021.

The Pomodoro Bear is a study device that allows students to maximize their productivity while avoiding burnout and stress. Recently, there has been a rising popularity of using virtual clocks to keep track of how long students have been studying. This design transforms this concept into a physical product in order to avoid digital distraction and incorporates the Pomodoro studying technique which was inspired by a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. This study method breaks up a task into 25-minute intervals with no distractions or interruptions followed by a 5-minute break. This increment is called one Pomodoro and you would repeat this 4 times before taking a longer break.

The Pomodoro Bear was manufactured using several rapid prototyping techniques taught in E29. The design features two hourglass subassemblies that can be rotated within a wooden bear structure using handles. These hourglass timers last 5 minutes and 25 minutes and are made up of 3D-printed material with cavities for the sand to flow through. Laser-cut acrylic is used to seal the sand within the subassembly and to contain those subassemblies within the wooden bear which was cut using the Shopbot CNC. Special thank you to Jacobs Project Support for making this fabrication possible.