Corus
A holographic candle system that promotes dyadic sleep in couples
Process Documentation for MDes/MPS IxD Studio 1, CMU
Project 1: “Screens and beyond”, in collaboration with Philips
Design Team: Nehal Vora, Julia Petrich, Meric Dagli, Rossa Kim Instructor: Austin S. Lee
The design brief was to create a digital family sleep solution for a multi-user context for sleep monitoring and optimization. Most of the sleep solutions available in market today are targeted towards individual benefit, but, there is a niche to create a solution that acknowledges the family structure as a whole to enhance the total sleep quality. By understanding the needs of various families going through different life events and transitions can better inform us about various parameters of “ideal sleep” and relay them to design a meaningful solution. The interventions need to be subtle in order for them to be embed in existing family rituals, non-obtrusively.
We looked into various family contexts and the concerns faced by distinct groups surrounding sleep to narrow down our focus area. We were most interested in cohabitating couples: researching the transitions when two individuals with potentially distinct lifestyles start living together and the adjustments they make to develop a new sleep routine. Thus, to tackle the issue of sleep consistency and quality, we closely looked at the physical as well as the relationship health throughout the design process.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Our research methods have ranged from reading academic literature and articles, creating a survey with open-ended questions, and conducting more in-depth interviews which included showing some design provocations to our potential users.
Utopian and Dystopian Scenarios-
To comfort our interviewees into talking about their sleep situations and to gather stark reactions from them, we used some provocative storyboards depicting three utopian and dystopian scenarios.
This strategy helped extract some strong reactions from our interviewees raising some interesting questions and giving us a feed of some interesting insights into the practice of the couples.
Pain points-
We did some deeper mapping of the experiences of each of our interviewees. As we did this, we started to see a pattern: couples who have dyadic sleep schedules have few, if any, issues around sleep, and most couples who do experience pain points around sleep could improve their situation with a more synchronized sleep schedule.
Research Insights-
We concluded that the journey of making accommodations from when the couples decide to move-in to the time when they settle in together demonstrates a peculiar curve and the three main territories where adjustments and conflicts arise are:
Incompatible sleep behaviors, Different sleep cycles and Balance of privacy and intimacy.
Research Questions-
1.Couples who establish healthy patterns and arrangements early on have an easier time maintaining their relationship.
How can our solution assist during the more fraught transition period at the beginning of cohabitation as well provide support throughout the long-term maintenance of a relationship?
Design for Easing the Onboarding and Maintenance of Cohabitation
2.Many couples are concerned about the concept of “fairness” in their relationships.
How can our solution help couples feel like there is an equitable reciprocation of contributions and sacrifices?
Design for Empowering Negotiation
3.Dyadic sleep cycles cause the fewest problems for partners, but individuals often live with the hassle of sleep cycle inconsistencies rather than put in the effort to change.
How can our solution frame optimizing sleep cycles as a way to prevent problems before they occur? How can we create a solution that promotes dyadic sleep without prescribing it?
Design for Encouragement, Not Prescription
DESIGN PROCESS:
We started the design with the question of what we constitute as Ideal sleep in the context of couples. While on one hand focusing on these ideals, we wanted to keep in mind all of the new technologies that are becoming more prevalent in our world.
We then created matrix exercise to help us see which technologies had the most potential for a couple sleep solution. We designed proposal for each combination and then criticized each one for its pros and cons, narrowing down our focus further.
We believe that dyadic sleep cycles cause the fewest problems for partners, but individuals often live with the hassle of sleep-cycle inconsistencies rather than working on it. We also thought back to our utopian solution for different sleep cycles, and to some of the feedback we heard from our interviewees. One specific quote stood out: 1) ”You purchase this kind of thing with the intention to change your behaviors.” That’s what we tried to build into Corus. Instead of trying to convince couples that dyadic sleep is a good idea for them, we focused on creating a solution that is simple, intuitive, and hopefully somewhat attractive.
To promote healthy value in developing a more synchronized schedule in cohabitating couples, we designed a holographic candle system, Corus. The main idea behind the system is to help couples get a sense of balance in their preferred schedules by calculating the optimal, mutual go-to-bed time for the couple and make them aware of the compromises to be made at any time through subtle display features on the mobile application.
The SYSTEM:
The main components of Corus are: a main candle in the bedroom and other “satellite” candles around the home. The candles themselves are holographic projection votives that are connected to the lighting system of the home through bluetooth. Users can control the lights either through gestural inputs to the candles directly, picked up the by motion sensors in the votive, or through a mobile app. The holographic projection gives an opportunity for the candle projection to change into different artwork every morning. We envision that the cloud can connect to users’ email account and social media to pull relevant information like travel plans, birthdays etc. that can be visualized to delight the users, which otherwise can default to weather information for the day.
The candles themselves offer feedback to the users in their color. Each of users has a different accent color on their app (one blue and one yellow). The candle’s color will be somewhere in the middle of these two hues. This helps the couples get a sense of the balance in their preferred schedules, as in, who is getting closer to their preferred schedule and who might be making more of a compromise on average at any time.
The WORKING:
At sunset, the candles light up. Sensors detect the motion of people around the home and the satellite candles notify the couple when the bedtime is approaching by flickering action. Smoke animations in the candle reveal the current time to the users. If need be, the sleep time can be delayed with gesture or through the app. As the bedtime nears, the flames fade slowly and the lights in living areas start to dim as well, while the bedroom light brighten up. This is a subtle nudge for the couples to approach to the bedroom.
When the couple is in the bedroom and in bed, the main candle hears the audio input from the conversation and is responsive to it. While the conversation has energy the lights and the candle remain lit. As the conversation slows, the lights and the candle dim. Once the conversation stops, the candle burns out, and the lights turn off.
As the sun rises, the holograph reappears: a gently animated waxy abstract “sculpture” of something relevant to the couple. Using smartphones and tablets, the couple can use the CORUS app to control the lights manually or delay bedtime as necessary. There’s also a gestural input to manually turn off lights (pinch the flame), “snooze” the reverse alarm/delay the lights turning off (fan the flame), and turn the lights back on by snap.
The Components:
- The Mobile App- Wireframes show the user flow- the on-boarding process from sign up to goal setting to the input of preferences. The home screen leads to light controls for the home’s various rooms, to preference resetting and modification, and to more deeper analysis. A pop-up notification shows when users are on their phone and a screensaver that lights up to notify the user.
The app is used foremost to set a goal and initial preferences, but it also functions as a secondary notification of approaching bedtime and a dashboard of analytics of evening conversation energy, dynamic, and volume.
2. The Prototype:
CONCEPT VIDEO:
