A Dyadic Sleep System for Cohabitating Couples
Most sleep solutions on the market today are targeted towards individual benefit. There is an opportunity for more solutions that acknowledge sleep as a family health consideration. This is why we designed Corus, a system that helps cohabitating couples become more synchronized in their sleep routines. It includes a set of holographic candles and an app that connect to the home’s lighting system. Corus helps couples reach a balance in their preferred sleep schedules by calculating the optimal, mutual bedtime for the couple and making them aware of the compromises they are making through subtle display features on the holographic candles and the mobile application.
Meric Dagli, Rossa Kim, and Nehal Vora
Interaction Design Lab, Fall 2016, Austin S. Lee
Philips Design
Concept Generation and Ideation, Design Research Methods and Synthesis, Design Provocations, Sketching and Wireframing, Video Filming and Production
Complete Process Documentation and TEI'17 Work-in-Progress Paper
What We Made
Corus includes a main candle in the bedroom, other satellite candles around the home, and a mobile app that connects all satellite candles to the main one through the cloud. The candles are holographic projection votives connected to the home's lighting system via Bluetooth. Users control the lights either through the mobile app or the candles which respond to gestural inputs. The cloud also connects to the users' social media, pulling relevant information and displaying it in the form of art to remind and hopefully delight the users each morning.
At sunset, the candles light. Motion sensors allow the flames to respond to people walking past or other movement. The satellite candles flicker to notify the couple of bedtime approaching. The flames fade slowly and lights in living areas dim, while the bedroom lights rise. This nudges the couple toward the bedroom together. When couple is in bed, the main candle responds to audio in the room. While the conversation has energy the lights and candle remain lit. As it slows, the lights and the candle dim. Once it stops, the candle burns out, and the lights turn off.
The mobile app is used at first to set goals and initial preferences and then functions as a secondary notification for approaching bedtime and a dashboard of analytics of evening conversation energy, dynamics, and volume. The home screen leads to light controls for the home’s various rooms, to preference resetting and modification and to deeper analysis. A pop-up notification shows when users are on their phone and a screensaver that lights up to notify the user. Each of the two users has a color that belongs to them, either blue or yellow.
The candles themselves offer feedback to users in their color. Each of the users has a unique accent color on their app (blue and yellow). The candle’s color (both on the app and in the holographic projection) will be somewhere in the middle of these two hues. This helps the couples get a sense of balance in their preferred schedules, in terms of who is getting closer to their preferred schedule and who might be making more of a compromise. This is not something that users would quantify but would more qualitatively understand.
To create a demo of our work, we have used a Pepper's Ghost technique, which is an almost century-old method of creating three-dimensional illusions. It has been used in theaters to create illusions using prism reflections. We prepared our composition for the Pepper's Ghost in After Effects, which we aligned and arrayed using one of our animation instances in 360 degrees by 90 degrees. We created the holographic projection votive using lasercut acrylic and a 3D-printed base. We will be presenting this work-in-progress prototype at TEI'17 in Yokohama, Japan.
How We Got There
The family sleep context of newly-cohabitating couples is an interesting transition when two individuals living together must develop new sleep (and other) routines. To address sleep consistency and quality, we looked closely at the physical and relationship healths of the couple. Three sources of conflict emerged from our research: (1) Incompatible sleep behaviors, (2) Different sleep cycles, and (3) Balance of privacy and intimacy.
To understand the needs and comfort levels of couples with technology in the bedroom and in their relationship, we developed a set of provocations for each of our three problem areas. Utopic provocations imagine a relationship future based on harmony, which is the result of work and spending a lot of time together. Dystopic provocations, on the other hand, are less personal and mitigate disharmony without requiring effort.
From our user interviews and surveys, we synthesized a picture of what ideal sleep looks like and identified opportunity areas for design intervention. Some of these are moments of friction such as transitions, and some support positive couple behaviors such as nighttime conversation. Ultimately, we chose to focus specifically on dyadic sleep, as most issues surrounding couple sleep stem from asynchronous sleep cycles.
To generate many concepts quickly, we created a matrix by which we crossed sleep goals with various technologies. This helped us be creative and forward-thinking about our applications of technology to this problem. We were then able to affinity map these concepts to find overlaps and ultimately decide the design direction we wanted to take as a team, focusing on dyadic sleep, with a secondary focus on nighttime conversation.
It was important for us as a team to carefully wireframe the onboarding process, especially since we have two users to onboard in parallel. A primary user sets up the account and invites the secondary partner. Then, each partner individually sets up their own sleep goals and requirements. The app's algorithms select an optimal sleep and wake-up time for the couple to allow them to have the most synchronized sleep possible.
We then wireframed the daily functions of the app. Users are able to use the app to control lights in the house, as well as adjust their sleep and wake-up times. They can also view sleep stats to see information from their wearables cross-referenced with their partners, including the amount of nighttime conversation they have. Users view their candles during the evening, and during the day, they see something from their day.
Finally, we created a Pepper's Ghost prototype and box as a demo of our holographic votive. This demonstrates how prismatic shapes can be used to project images we can appear three-dimensional. We will be showing this work as a part of the Work-in-Progress demos at TEI'17 in Yokohama, Japan. For further iterations on our prototype, we plan to demonstrate our gestural inputs (pinch, fan, and spark) using Leap Motion.
We see Corus as a solution that not only improves the physical health of a couple but also promotes the couple's relationship health. Corus names sleep as a pillar of relationship health but points toward other metrics of relationship health such as communication. There are many pillars of relationship health, and we wonder how solutions like Corus that offer ambient feedback could help in other areas that are key to a successful relationship.
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