Dreem
2019/01 - 2019/02
6 weeks, 4-person team
User Experience / User Interface
A collaborative project with VentureThree seeks for new design opportunities for Dreem. Working under the direction of designing experience on how to make a positive impact on people waking life, the final product consists of 2 parts: a public exhibition and app upgrade for women during menstruation. The exhibition is a promotion for Dreem to show and raise the awareness of women menstrual sleep. Through an interactive pop-up illustration and VR experience, visitors can build empathy to women from the storytelling. Some updates and restructures on the app interface are made for menstrual monitoring, analysing and reporting.
Adobe XD | Illustration CC | Photoshop CC
Background
VentureThree is a brand company based in London and redesigned the brand identity for Italian company, Dreem in 2018. Dreem is a sleep device (headband) designed for monitoring, analysing and enhancing the quality of sleep by using white noise. It aims to help users to fall asleep faster, get deeper sleep and wake up at the optimal time.
Finding
Gender taboo
Menstruation seems to be a taboo in men world. Mis-leaded information or rumours are still surprisedly exciting nowadays in those men living with his female partners for years. Under a defective education system, teenagers are barely taught about how to treat it properly. People avoid talking about as female are too embarrassing to share while male acting in ignorance. Conflicts sometimes happen even affecting both qualities of sleep.
Neglects the need
The design industry is man-oriented. Designs usually starting from self-perspective and thus ignore other gender needs, for example, Apple Health launched in 2014, but features for menstruation have just been offered in 2019. Sometimes the female in the team likewise overlooked the need as most of them have overcome it or get used to. They are not seeking for a new method to soothe their discomfort. This situation also happened in Dreem, no features about women menstrual sleep in the product ecosystem.
“Develop a product, service, interface, game, programme or physical space that focuses attention on the active outcome of sleep.”
— Design brief
Research Method
Initial research
Research started with literature reviews, which included studies about the concept of sleeping, sleep patterns and related product. Following with an online questionnaire, 52 Londoner shared their stories and views about their sleeping and daily life. 5 participants were invited to have video inspection as to analyse their sleeping posture and behaviours.
Interviews &
Diary studies
Street interviews were conducted to see people’s views on menstruation and sleep. These 63 interviewees were from different genders and ages, including transgender and teenagers. Following up with in-depth interviews, 5 females were invited to share about their sleeping habits and routine during, before and after menstruation. They were also asked to write sleep diaries to find out how menstruation affecting women sleep quality and its knock-on effect on the next day.
Conceptual testing
Chun Li, a fictional character in a Japanese video game, seems to fit as a symbolic icon of a strong empowering woman without any suffering on menstruation. What will happen if Chun Li after a menstrual sleep? Putting this idea into the 1st experience prototype, it demonstrates how female's emotion and self-perception in her waking life that can be influenced by bad menstrual sleep. Through this storytelling exercise, it sets prophase of the next model building on how to create viewers’ empathy.
Journey maps &
Experience prototype
2 user journey maps then were generated to see how the idea go. Before building the actual VR, the elements that would be seen in the experience were transformed into physical paper-made models. 20 target audiences, who were 25-35, males, invited to test this rough prototype. Based on the feedback, it had been modified and tested again together with interactive illustrations.
Final Design
Aims
Raise awareness on menstruation and how it affects women daily life
Eliminate misunderstanding of menstruation
Create conversations around the subject of menstrual sleep
Integrate features about menstrual sleep into Dreem product ecosystem
App update
Dreem now does not support on menstrual sleep. Based on the current design language of the band, some mock-up demonstrates for updates are designed in the areas, including sleep assessment, report and program. Cooperated and integrated the function with Livia, a device stimulates nerves to block pain through releasing electrical pulse, Dreem headband can further be programmed to improve women quality of sleep during menstruation.
Exhibition ( Gallery )
The exhibition is a day-and-night story about women affected by menstrual sleep. It consists of 2 parts. Visitors first walk into the gallery and play with interactive illustrations, which displays things may happen at the night during menstruation.
Exhibition ( VR experience )
The second part is a VR zone for visitors to experience the day times after suffering a bad menstrual sleep. The experience is an integrated story of participants and trying to help visitors building empathy to women situation.
