Week 2 : Concept Development v.1

Over this week, we split the team to 2 and developed two different concepts. Leah and I chose the concept #1, a group sleep solution in a shared travel accommodation context. As the share economy has emerged as the new paradigm of traveling, we thought that one possible place context might be Airbnb apartments.

Brainstorming

Our basic idea was:

• Bring the home-like cozy bedroom environment at Airbnb, vacation home or hostel dormitory
• A smart home solution that controls temperature, humidity, scent, light and sounds
• A system that learns the preference of each user and sets the optimal sleeping environment at foreign places

Then we listed up possible features for our solution as below.

• Reducing jet lag and stress from long traveling
• Loading sleep environment data from home
• Providing individual space for each (barrier)
• Controlling sleep-wake cycle by sunrise and sunset time
• Use white noise/music/scent as the trigger to sleep
• Has to be portable and non-mounted device
• Optimizing their limited amount time for traveling
• Reducing the anxiety of security and disturbance

We found a couple of good example of portable smart sleeping solutions. Their appearance looks just like ordinary travel items and provides silent nudges to wake users up or stop snoring. Gentle notification is very important to group sleep context, because noticeable alarms might disturb others’ sleep.

Nora, the portable anti-snoring device, prevents users from snoring with a silent nudge.

Neuroon, the intelligent sleep mask that tracks and analyzes users’ sleeping cycle

Persona and Scenario

On the next step, we created three personas and scenarios based on the type of accommodation. Among many types of lodging, we chose Airbnb apartments, hostel dormitories and recreational vehicles as our space context.

Scenario 1: The Airbnb guest who wants to get back to their normal sleeping cycle
“John is traveling China and found a great apartment on Airbnb. After long flight, he met his host, had a nice local traditional dinner together and had a chat until late night. He didn’t realized that it is too late to go to bed.

So, the host sets up the system that helps his guest get back to his normal sleeping cycle gradually. As he switch on the system, it loads data from John’s smartphone and tracks the optimized sleeping cycle. It also automatically control John’s bedroom temperature, humidity and light level and scent, helping him sleep well.”

Scenario 2: The budget traveler who wants to have a good night sleep in the hostel dorm

“Sarah who loves photography and travelling alone and to explore the world during the vacations. After the long flight, she arrives at her hostel late in the midnight. By the time she entered her room, other guests were already in bed and some of them were snoring. Besides, she was worried that her expensive camera might be stolen while she was sleeping.

She really needs a system that provides soundproof space with virtual boundaries, which can alerts when some dangers happen. If it can help people to fall asleep quickly, as well as wake them efficiently and quietly in the morning.”

Scenario 3: The family who travel across the US with the RV

Jack and Jill are married couple and having a long vacation with their kids. They decided to rent a RV and travel across the United States. Since the car keeps moving and the environment is different from home, kids can’t sleep well. They use smartphones to play games or make lots of noise at night. Jack and Jill drive the car in turns so they are easily exhausted after long drive. They are also worried about security when they sleep on the camping site.

They bring the portable security sleeping solution. Not only it provides their bedroom-like condition, but it also provide security feature, keeping them from theft or bed weather condition. The solution also let them know the ideal time to change the driver or get rests so they optimize their moving time and energy.

During the second meeting, the team gathered once again and shared the developed ideas with each other. We showed our personas and scenarios to Ming and Eunjeong, and they picked the second scenario as the best one. Leah and I decided to develop a rough storyboard for ‘personal and collective sleep optimization tool in a group sleep environment’.

Creating the Storyboard

After choosing the final concept, we created the rough storyboard to explain our envision for the future. Among many possible features, we decided to choose some of them by following these conditions.

• Don’t disturb other people
• Don’t feel anxiety
• How travelers facilitate creating ideal sleep-wake moments

Again, we refined our second persona (the budget traveler staying at the hostel dorm) as below.

“John is a young budget traveler. who prefers to save money on flight and accommodation. After the long flight, he struggles to readjust his sleeping schedule. He wants to have a good night sleep, but he’s worried of getting disturbed by snoring and light. Also, he’s concerned if he disturbs other guests’ sleep in the late night and the morning.”

Finally, we expanded our solution as a service landscape provided at future hostels. It consists of a set of rental sleep masks and the mounted smart home system, providing optimized group sleep experience by tracking REM cycle and desirable wake-up time of each guest.

Here is the final storyline of our solution:

1. John arrives at the hostel and checks into a 10-person dorm. The hostel staff gives him an eye mask and earplugs along with the key.
2. Before he enter his room, he enters the time he wants to wake up on the panel mounted next to the dorm door.
3. He puts the mask on before he falls asleep. As he falls asleep, the mask blocks out external light while the earplugs play soft music.
4. While he’s sleeping, the mask tracks his REM cycle and send the data to the smart panel and the earplugs cancel the noise from outside.
5. As the traveler approaches his wake-up time, the smart panel communicates with the sleeping mask to wake him up at the ideal phase of his REM cycle.
6. If it’s still dark inside, the eye mask turns on infrared view so he can figure out where the door is in the dark