Co-Sleep: Ideation

We went through a hard process for ideation. We brainstormed a lot and continued negating our ideas before finally moving on. I would illustrate some of the ideas in this post.

Brainstorming

First we thought about our findings from last week and concluded some ideas.

• When one is awake while the other is still asleep, we thought about whether the waking person can know how he is affecting the sleeping partner;

• When both are asleep, we thought about collecting co-sleep data and show it in an interesting way;

• Before sleep, we thought about building some pre-sleep rituals for couples to prepare for co-sleep.

Then we brainstormed about the more detailed ideas and wrote them down on paper , before putting them into categories.

• data visualisation & information

• aid & guidance

• product design

• play & art

Some ideas

This one is an AR guidance for one wanting to go to the toilet in the dark.

Idea of showing the path in dark using AR

This one is a breathing light on the bed sheet. The dim light shows the breathing tempo of the sleeping one. When the other one comes back, he can feel partner's breathing and he also feels as if his partner was keeping a light for him. When he makes some noise, the light would change to remind him of keeping quiet. When he finally sleeps on the bed, the light would turn off.

A breathing light on sheet

This one (16) is a video game for the one who cannot fall asleep. The game is related with his partner's snoring.

A game for insomnia person

Also a game about an avatar for the couple. The couple will find sleep coordination as a game by training their avatar. The idea is inspired by wii game played in the childhood.

An co-avatar game

Discussing process

User Journey

At this stage, we chose the "avatar" idea to develop considering its entertainment and potential. We further discussed about the user journey. Basically, the couple would use the avatar before sleep as a coach. The avatar would either be a hologram or a digital one.

User Journey of the "avatar" idea

Reflection

However, after presentation, we found out that we were missing a keyword "relationship". We were designing for couple but we kept focusing on finding problems and solving problems in the ideation process. We were kind of "missing the poetic trip when couple sleep together", as Alaistair said. Also, for the "avatar" idea, it makes little sense for couple using an avatar to teach them before sleep: they need a building for relationship but not cold technic things.