Sun Dial: A Mobile Islamic Call to Prayer Application

We present Sun Dial, a mobile phone application that supports Muslims daily prayer practices. Our project responds to growing interest in understanding how to appropriately design technologies that account for and support users spiritual and religious practices. The systems interface resides on the background screen, or a mobile phones wallpaper to provide a reminder whenever and wherever the phone is used. Unlike similar systems ours relies on graphics rather than text and graphs to communicate prayer times. The suns gentle movement through the sky prompts Muslim users to their five daily prayer times. Users drove this choice, by telling us that tracking the sun was the most religiously valued method to determine prayer times.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• interaction_design;
• islam;
• prayer;
• techno-spiritual;
• mobile_phone;
• design