Field report 04 · Consumer IoT · Founder
From an alarm clock to a morning controller. The first Works with Nest app.
It began in 2011 as myAchy, an elective-healthcare booking app. Investor feedback pushed it into sleep, and it became Cleu (Clever Learning Engineered Unit): an alarm clock that grew into a controller for the first hour of the day.
A one-page PDF of this field report.
- Company
- Cleu, first called myAchy
- Role
- Founder and CEO, product and UX
- Platforms
- iPhone, Apple Watch
- Works with
- Nest, Philips Hue, Uber, BSH coffee, CTA bus, Apple Music, YouTube
- Years
- 2011 – 2020
S1The situation
Alarms wake you up. They don't get your morning ready.
Most of a morning routine happens around the alarm, not in it. Cleu's users already started their day in the app, so the app could start the day for them.
S2The one outcome
Turn the alarm into a controller for the first hour of the day.
We stopped calling them alarms and started calling them events: repeatable routines tied to the devices and services in your home and on your commute.
S3What we built
Wake up with the five human senses.
Coffee already brewing, a ventilated kitchen, warm towels in the dryer, lights and heat set, and a ride booked for pickup. The alarm was optional. The routine did the waking.
Four versions
Each version woke up a little more of the house.
Cleu started as a clock and weather on the lock screen. Every release added something that happens around waking up, until the alarm itself was the least important part.
Storyboard · one connected morning
The alarm was optional. The routine did the waking.
Meet Erwin. This is one of his mornings with Cleu. Every frame is something that was ready for him before he had to think about it.
The invention · from Cleu’s provisional patent
The snooze button became a controller.
Every other alarm treated snooze as a delay. Cleu treated it as a signal. You traced a shape around a ring of dots to snooze or stop, and how often you snoozed told the app you were actually awake. Only then did the morning start.
In
Three kinds of input: your own time, sensors from hardware and partners, and the world around you, like weather.
1 · 2 · 3
You choose how long Snooze 1, 2 and 3 last, so the first one can be gentle and the last one gets you moving.
Trace
A half-asleep tap doesn’t count. You trace a shape around the ring, so the app knows a real person is surfacing.
Out
Car, audio, video, food, temperature and lights fire only once your snooze pattern says you’re up.
From the notebook
Alarms became events.
Snooze 1, 2 and 3 each got their own delay, and every alarm became an event: a work commute with Uber, a coffee machine to prepare, a morning sketched as one routine. We watched every alarm set, edited and snoozed to learn what people needed.
In the patent drawings
We drew the whole idea out, so we could protect it.
Cleu’s provisional patent turns the snooze controller into a system: the alarm, the content you wake up to, and the devices around you, working together.
Cleu Connect
Works with established connected-home devices.
Cleu was the first app in the Works with Nest program, and grew into lights, rides, coffee and transit. Each integration was a dial you could set once and forget.
Nest thermostats
Temperature
Philips Hue scenes
Lighting
Uber and CTA bus times
Transport
BSH coffee machines
Kitchen
Apple Music and YouTube
Sound
The debrief
What the mornings added up to.
A small team, a lot of early mornings, and a community of people around the world who wanted to start their day a little better.
Works with NestThe first app in the program
Mobile FWA, twiceIncluding Mobile of the Day, 19 Aug 2015
EntrepreneurOne of five promising IoT products
CES 2016One of 16 emerging companies at OMD Startup Cocktails
Apple WatchPowerNap on the first Watch App Store
App StoreFeatured on the Home and Utilities pages
- 1M+Users worldwide
- 10M+Human wake-ups
- 4.5/5App Store rating, and a Top 10 Free Utility
In their words
“I saw Uzair develop as the CEO of Cleu. He's been able to take an idea from concept to one of the most highly rated and more importantly, loved apps by its users.”
Then Sr. Producer, Human Interface Design, Apple
“He puts this same amount of energy into Cleu and always thinks about his user first.”
Cesar Gomez
Staff Product Designer“He puts trust in others and refines his product accordingly, never micromanaging or downplaying anyone else's ideas.”
Faiz Zuberi
Product Designer
Laps · how it got here
2011
myAchy
Elective healthcare: book and pay for dental care on iPad.
Dec 1, 2012
Cleu 1.0
A clock and weather, built for the first glance.
2013
PowerNap
Calendar and timed naps join the morning.
2015
The home
Nest, Hue, Uber and the Apple Watch.
2016
Cleu 4.0
Works with Nest, and mornings that follow the light.
2018 – 2019
Into classrooms
Design thinking workshops in K-12 schools. Field report 06.
What carried forward
Cleu’s chapter closed, but the question at its heart stayed with Uzair: what does a person need at the start of the day? It became DistrictZero’s morning check-in for students, and later a 60-second agenda for busy clinicians.
