Alarm Buddy
A companion app to the Unsung Heroes campaign — an iBeacon and smartphone pairing that nudges you to test your smoke alarm, the moment you walk past it.
- Client
- Fire Kills (HM Government)
- Agency
- Engine
- My role
- Creative Technologist
- Year
- 2016
Alarm Buddy was the technology extension of Unsung Heroes — our campaign for HM Government’s Fire Kills that reframed smoke alarms as the quiet, well-meaning heroes of the home.
The problem with a monthly smoke-alarm test is a pure behaviour-change one: nobody forgets in principle, everybody forgets in practice. A calendar reminder is easy to swipe away from the sofa. A reminder that only appears when you’re actually stood under the alarm is much harder to ignore.
How it works
A small iBeacon fitted near the smoke alarm pairs with the Alarm Buddy app on your phone. Walk within about five metres and the app knows you’re in range; if it’s time for this month’s test, you get a gentle, quietly-written nudge to reach up and press the button.
It’s a small idea, but the framing is what I liked. It treats the smoke alarm as a character rather than a chore — a humanised hero with a monthly check-in — and lets the technology do the remembering so you don’t have to.