Brainstroming
At the beginning we met for a brainstroming session in order to decide on a product we wanted to
design. Therefore, we picked three personas and filled out the following concepts accordingly:
- What do they see?
- What do they hear?
- What do they do?
- What do they say?
- What do they feel?
- What are their hidden needs?
- What are their everyday problems?
The personas were Stefan Student, a student, Klara Kind, a five year old preschool child, and
Annika Arbeitnehmer, a working mother. For each of these personas we then collected a bunch of
product ideas, validated them and decided finally on three products per persona.
After that, we discussed the different ideas and decided on designing a bedside lamp for children
with the following goal:
A lamp designed to help children sleep and wake up better.
For this purpose, it lights up the room during nightmares (measured by e.g. microphone) and can
slowly light up the room in the morning to enable a relaxed waking up.
Information Background
For validating our idea, we researched about already existing products in the
market, if children
actually do have problems with sleeping and how legal regulations for
microphone usage in
children products are.
When searching for products on the market, we realized that nothing like we planned already
existed.
Children's sleep, especially in the years of attending preschool, is enormously important.
About 15-20% of preschool children suffer from problems falling asleep or staying asleep
Proper sleep hygiene, especially at this age, is crucial for growing up healthy
Sleep disorders in childhood often lead to hyperactivity, aggressiveness or
irritability in children. Long-term consequences can be far-reaching, such as
depression or obesity. An important factor for healthy sleep hygiene is light.
Especially the biorythm of children is even more sensitive to light, as their eyes are
not yet fully developed
Therefore, the used light must not be too bright to not surpress melatonin on a high
level
Melatonin is the
hormone
that regulates the sleep-wake cycle.
From a legal point of view, we can use micorphones in the lamp to detect whether a child has
a nightmare as long as the parents give their consent. Since no data is stored here, but
only used for processing for the light function of the lamp, an
unhesitating usage is provided.
User Survey
To understand more the parents' and children's needs and wishes, we conducted user surveys
with parents from young children. We asked i.e. what the sleep hygiene looks like, if their
children have nightmares, if yes what they do about it and if the children have a bedside lamp.
We also got pictures sent from the children's rooms and noticed here that a lot of them
did not have nightstands and that often the door to the corridor stands
open to constantly bring in some light.
Ergonomics
Specific points regarding the ergonomics of the bedside lamp were:
- Being able to stand on a nightstand
- Being able to be fixed to the bedstead
- Big enough buttons and switches to be used by parents and child
- Ideally fitting in a child's hand
Abstraction Ladder
For collecting all of our insights we created the following abstraction ladder:
