A working definition of "Minimum Awesomeness"

Last month, I was home in PA for my sister-in-law's wedding. While I was there, I got to hang our with my sister-in-law and her fiancé's circle of friends, which are individually and collectively far hipper than me.¹ Anyway, one fellow at the gathering was wearing a watch which I have been turning over in my mind a bit, as I could not decide whether is is awesome or awful.

The watch is pictured on the left. It is from a company called Nixon².

Note the small vertical line on the bottom of the face. There are two disks which rotate on the face; the outer one (with the larger numbers) gives the hour, and the inner one gives the minutes. Because there are intermediate hash marks on the outer disk, it is immediately apparent both how far past the hour you are and how close you are to the next hour. This makes me think the watch is awesome.

OK, let's backup a moment. Why does this make me think the watch is awesome? To explain this, you have to know why digital display watches are less desirable/useful than analog dial watches. When you look at a digital watch, you can only see the hour and how far past the hour you are. You have to do a mental subtraction to see how long until the next hour. When you look at an analog watch face, you get both of those pieces of information at a glance by the minute hand's position, i.e. the display has twice as much information available at a single view. This watch, while not being the standard 2-hand analog face, provides all the information of that arrangement. So, point for awesome.

On the other hand, this watch does not have a second hand³ nor does it provide any clear advantage over the default 2-hand arrangement. Plus, upon seeing it for the first time, it took me second to figure out exactly how to read it. Effectively, this watch is simply a redesign of standard object where the redesigned object confers no additional advantages, besides looking cool. The argument can be made that the watch's design is merely clever, not smart. This is what makes me think the watch may, in fact, be awful.

The more I turn it over in my brain, the more I think the watch is in fact awesome, although just barely. I think this allows us to define the minimum level of awesome. Some thing has achieved "minimum awesomeness" if it is really well/beautifully/interestingly designed in an aesthetic sense with zero loss of functionality.


Notes:
1) I realize, as an overweight geek who makes a living in the hard sciences, that being hipper than me is not a particular challenge. Also, is hip the right word? Or am I dating myself, much in the same way my Mom used to by referring to guys wearing sunglasses inside the mall as "hep cats?"
2) The link above takes you to the page about the watch, not the general Nixon home page.
3) The lack of second hand is minor, as it could be trivially added by adding another rotating disk.