Better sleep for babies and parents, easier research for scientists
Citizen Science
Wearable
mobile app
In this course project, we were to create a conceptual design for citizen science. We designed a system that helps parents log baby sleep data for scientific research, and in turn guides parents in their chosen sleep methods. It includes:
Citizen science: the collection and analysis of data relating to the natural world by members of the general public, typically as part of a collaborative project with professional scientists. (Oxford Dictionary)
Sleep methods: sleep arrangements, routines, and techniques that help babies achieve better sleep. Specifically, sleep training refers to techniques for teaching babies to self-soothe and sleep independently.
Many parents struggle with getting their babies to fall asleep. Though there are many so-called “sleep methods”, their efficacy is not well examined by research. Studies on this topic often have a low sample size, lack longitudinal data, do not compare between different methods, and rely heavily on parent self-reporting.
We chose this problem space because while studies on babies are often hindered by ethics and access issues, many parents keep records of their babies that can potentially contribute to research. We initially focused on opportunities for citizen science and early childhood development. After further secondary research, we narrowed it down to baby sleep methods.
How might we design a system that not only enables parents to participate in citizen science by providing accurate baby sleep data to researchers, but also provides value back to the parents to encourage participation?
time
Sep 2019 - Dec 2019
type
MS HCDE Course Project
my roles
Lead: Survey, Competitive Analysis, Persona, Ideation, Low-to-High Fidelity Design
Participate: Secondary Research, Semi-Structured Interview, Contextual Inquiry, Concept Testing, Service Design, Hardware Prototyping, Usability Studies
Teammates
UX Research & Design: Kyle Manske, Megan Peaslee
We employed various methods to research parents’ experiences with helping their babies sleep and their attitudes toward different sleep methods.
We distributed an online survey on various social media platforms and gathered 98 valid responses from parents with children under 2 years old. We asked questions probing:
We asked survey participants why they did or did not sleep train their kids, and received a lot of detailed and interesting answers, such as:
“I can't imagine how you survive without having your baby sleeping through the night. The first 3 months when she wasn't sleeping through the night, life was miserable. I was depressed, angry, and extremely tired. So, to get my life together, we thought sleep training was a solution and thank god my baby cooperated.”
“I felt fostering independent sleep skills was important. I wanted to provide him with the opportunity to self soothe. I wanted him to value his room as his own safe and secure space.”
“Because I'm tired of night wakings, but I haven't learned from a trustworthy source how to help him sleep without creating abandonment issues. If I heard of one, I would love to learn how to use it.”
“I have been ambivalent. Kiddo seems mostly content with status quo, I like the bonding time of nursing before bed, but I don't want to do her any eventual disservice. Hence, the ambivalence.”
“I do not believe in failing to meet the needs of my children just because of a time on the clock. I do help them learn healthy sleep habits, but I do not leave them alone to do it.”
We performed 5 semi-structured interview sessions (4 remote and 1 in-person) with a total of 7 participants. We also performed contextual inquiry in each session. Aside from the questions that we asked in our survey, we further explored:
Sleep context: crib, swaddle, and sound machine
Notes tracking feedings and diaper changes
Mobile app tracking sleep and diaper changes
The various products that parents use to understand their baby’s sleep can be split into two overlapping categories: tracking and monitoring.
Tracking products are mostly mobile apps that help parents manually log their baby’s daily activities such as sleep, feeding, and diaper changes, so as to highlight patterns and anomalies.
Monitoring products are mostly designed to alert parents when babies are not sleeping normally, in order to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. They are attached to the baby (foot wrap, a clip on the diaper, a button on clothes) or the crib (sensor pads under the bed), and read data (movement, heart rate, sound, oxygen saturation) from sensors to determine the baby’s sleep condition. Some monitoring products also send data to companion apps that automatically record baby sleep.
Statements such as “That is logical and seems like it will work for me” and “No way, that won’t work. That doesn’t seem right” appeared often in interviews and survey responses. In addition, parents tried a combination of methods to help their kids sleep, not necessarily knowing the individual contribution of each.
Parents tended to equate sleep training with the Cry-It-Out method. Some parents perceived that sleep training was extreme and would disrupt the attachment between parent and baby. Other parents viewed it as a cost-benefit analysis: one night of upset is worth many nights of sleep.
Parents learned from other people’s experiences. They also read books recommended by family and friends. Many parents got their information on baby sleep from websites, but did not deem them trustworthy; doctors were the opposite.
Parents believed that bedtime routine was crucial to developing good sleep habits in their children. However, keeping a consistent routine could be hard if children started daycare or when other people took care of them.
Many parents tracked their children’s growth and activities, the most common of which being feeding and weight. Parents also used many common tools and technologies during their children’s bedtime and naptime.
Some common arrangements reported were: in a bassinet in the parents’ room (convenient for parents with newborns), in a crib in a separate room, and in bed with parents.
We synthesized our research findings into 4 personas, and developed our design requirements accordingly.
The personas differed mainly in their attitudes and experiences regarding baby sleep training, while also representing a wide spectrum of childcare situations, information sources, as well as sleep routines and products.
Based on our understanding of parents’ needs and the current state of research regarding baby sleep, our designed solution should:
Be an all-in-one, low-effort, and cohesive system;
Fit into the current bedtime routine seamlessly;
Can adapt to different sleeping arrangements;
Let parents control what data is kept private VS submitted for research.
Not add to parents’ stress or feeling of judgment;
Be a neutral source of information that does not force a sleep method;
Provide information back to the parents in a digestible way.
Gather infant sleep data that are valid for scientific analysis;
Communicate intent clearly and be transparent about gathered information.
After multiple rounds of sketching activities, we focused our design on a combination of a wearable sleep sensor and an accompanying app, with the option to pair with an existing video/audio baby monitor.
In concept testing, the baby monitor we wanted to include was deemed redundant and expensive: many parents already had an audio or video baby monitor. Thus we narrowed down our wearable design to an ankle band sensor with the option to pair compatible baby monitors if parents already owned one.
Concept testing also reaffirmed our decision to make a mobile app interface for the hardware because parents reported that the portability of an app was most convenient for them.
We produced mid-fidelity prototypes for both the hardware (ankle band) and the app, and conducted 3 in-person scenario-based usability tests with parents with at least one child of 3-12 months old. Our goals were:
Pancake the teddy bear with the ankle band on
Pancake in usability tests as a mock baby
Pancake in usability tests as a cushion
Our final design is a system called Dormi that helps parents track baby sleep through an ankle band and a companion app, so that scientists can study the collected data and in turn guide parents in their chosen sleep methods.
We mapped out the full cycle of use of the Dormi product and the services that support it.
The ankle band sensor triangulates when the baby is awake or asleep through motion, audio, and heart rate, and automatically logs data.
The design specifics are:
We developed a high-fidelity prototype for the accompanying mobile app, with flows of:
You can check out our prototype here:
We chose a great problem space for this project: getting babies to sleep is almost a universal struggle among parents, and many parents feel very strongly about this topic. We were overwhelmed by parents' enthusiasm for our research, and our project benefited greatly from it.
There are several things we would have done differently. First, we would like to team up with scientists who study infant sleep. We would also narrow down the project scope. If we had more time, however, we would spend it on more user testing: test with less experienced users, test out the full experience, and test the service map as part of our usability evaluation. We would also like to examine more closely whether parents were open to being trained as citizen researchers.
If we were to make this project a reality, we would want to incorporate an all-in-one system that enables parents to track anything they want for their children (i.e. feeding, diaper changes, daytime activity), a web platform for signing up to get the hardware, and a status report of the hardware on the app.
