Sun Dial Georgia Institute

Project

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed Sun Dial, a mobile application that alerts Muslim users when it is time to perform each of the day’s five prayers, using an image of the sun aligning with a green circle rather than text or graphs to signal prayer time. Doctoral researcher Susan Wyche said the team chose Islam partly for its global reach and partly because Muslims had historically used tools like compasses to determine prayer direction, and found through focus groups that participants most valued being prompted visually rather than through conventional alerts, testing the prototype favourably with Muslim users in the Atlanta area before planning further refinements such as a digital clock and vibration alert.