First draft

I edited and put all our work together.


Working Paper
Tania, Jeremy, Peter


SleepRite
Don’t just Sleep Tight, SleepRite





Sleep is an intimate part of life; it is a daily ritual and a very personal experience, from our preparation to our dreams to our waking, our sleep prepares us for the day ahead, unfortunately some people do not realise the importance or the impact their sleep has on our daily lives. In today’s fast paced world, sleep seems a luxury, not a need but when you get the best out of your sleep, you get the best out of your day and your quality of life improves drastically. If we deprive ourselves of sleep, we disrupt our very delicate sleep cycles and our body clocks begin to tick to the wrong beat. Through implementing a system of sleep cycle prediction, our product aims to enhance this daily productivity, whether short or long it will provide you with the highest quality of sleep possible within that given time; helping those who struggle with their sleep wake up feeling rejuvenated and ready for their waking day.


Keywords: Sleep, sleep cycle, rejuvenation, quality, productivity







Sleep is nature’s way of allowing our bodies to rejuvenate. Without sleep our bodies are forced to work into overtime without allowing our energy levels to be replenished on a daily basis. In today’s fast pace world a lack of sleep is not uncommon. This is why we would like to create a product (SleepRite) that will aid in “productive” sleep. We cannot control a person’s lifestyle but we can help improve their physical and mental energy by providing them with the best possible sleep.

Many people feel that sleep is a waste of time. “Either consciously or unconsciously, people make decisions about how to allocate their time, including time in bed and time working. A familiar chart on the walls of university students says “Sleep, work, play: pick two”.” We want to target these people that do not have or find the time for a decent night’s sleep, who wake up the following morning and feel unsatisfied.

The majority of people in this group are the busy; the career savvy and/or the family orientated. Every person has an individual sleep cycle, pattern and preparation, but what this set of people do have in common is their inability to enjoy a good nights sleep, considered a mild to extreme form of insomnia. These people make up almost 35% of the world’s population and simply accept bad sleep as a part of their life. It is neither a luxury nor a necessity , for them it is the fact of life.

This “fact of life” has been recognized as a problem and attempted to be fixed in the past and present. Basic methods such as music, hotties, exercise, diet etc work well for different individuals, but products have now been designed specifacally for productive sleep. The Philips Wake-Up Light Alarm Clock works throught light. As your alarm, light increasingly emits from your lamp in replica of the sun, allowing a more natural awakening . Two other products work similarily to our own proposed design, SleepRite. The SleepSmart Headband and SleepTracker Wristwatch both work by tracking sleep cycles, they are monitored through the head band and watch and wake you at the best possible time when you are in the light stage of your sleep cycle. The difference between these products and SleepRite are the usability, there are no additions to wear to bed, it is simply like setting your alarm as usual, except now you will wake up feeling rejuvenated.

When we sleep we go through a cycle of different stages, alternating between almost awake moments (light sleep) and deep sleep. A Full Sleep Cycle is thought to be roughly around 90 minutes long, we go through 5 of these cycles a night dependant on the time frame, the most important stages of sleep are deep sleep and REM sleep. REM (Rapid eye movement) sleep is where we do most of our dreaming and is also the best stage of sleep with which to wake up. By working out what stage of sleep we are in and for how long, we can predict when we will be in the REM stage of sleep and when best to wake the user.

With the SleepRite product the user is able to work out how much sleep he or she needs and able to plan their sleep so that they wake up at the most effective time, refreshed and rearing to go. The sleep prediction software can work in two ways, which ever suits the users lifestyle more fittingly. The user can either input in their desired wake up time and SleepRite will tell them the best time/s to go to bed and then wake them at that set time the following morning; or, the user can set a window, they input the earliest time they would like to wake up and the latest, then tell SleepRite when they have gone to bed, it will then wake them at a point during this window. Through either method the application use sleep cycle analysis to work out at which time would be best for the user to go to sleep or to wake up. It is as simple as that.

To make SleepRite successful and usable to our target audience it needs to be quick, easy to use, compatible, compact, and preferably inexpensive and most importantly does what it says it will do. Because our users will be (to an extent) busy, no nonsense, straight to the point type of people we need our product to appeal to these users and reflect their needs in their type of lifestyle. SleepRite fulfills all these requirements by simply adding to gadgets that people already know intimately.

Gadgets are the present novelty, handy little items of technology that provide a service to us. Often they conveniently sit in our pocket or handbag waiting for our attention, but more often or not, a newer and more advanced model will replace a gadget before you know it. Furthermore, products are becoming obsolete, technology is being incorporated as one, a multimedia machine, why carry two gadgets when you can get them both in just the one? So how do we avoid this happening to SleepRite? Easy, we jump on the bandwagon with them. Our product SleepRite will not be a physical model but a piece of software, a form of “plug-in” application that can be added and integrated to your very own ipod or cellphone, the two most personal gadgets society knows and loves.

The software will work through your calendar and/or alarm clock, allowing you to plan your sleep for weeks or months ahead or on a daily basis. Using the simple calendar and alarm clock interface that user is already well familiar with the user can set at which time he or she wishes to get up on particular days. Again, using the sleep cycle system your “gadget” will enable the software’s alarm feature to wake the user at the perfect time of the sleep cycle, letting the user feel fresh and ready to get up, beginning a productive day through the best sleep possible.

Sleep is one of the most important aspects of out lives, without it we start to falter in our daily activities, by using SleepRite the user will feel both refreshed and rejuvenated upon waking up can make the most of the day to come. Whether short or long SleepRite will allow you to make the most out of ever night’s sleep. Don’t just sleep tight, SleepRite.