Friday 2 October 2015

FMP: Wake Up light by Philips

To make this clear, my idea came before I research any existing products in the market, but only to realise how similar my idea is to this lamp from Philips. It's the Wake-Up Light



Wake-Up light is doing quite the same as my idea, it has the feature of simulating sunset to compensate the effects done by artificial light at night. Although I am not sure if circadian rhythm can be adjusted by this mean, the light was designed in this regard. When a certain function is turned on, the lamp will slowly dims down over 30 minutes duration.

In the morning, the lamp also simulates the sunrise by gradually brighten the light and the colour changing according the the actual sunrise, along with various default  nature sounds to wake up the person (you can supposedly choose any music in your music library, I am not an expert but I highly doubt that waking up with heavy metal is anywhere close to natural)



It also can track your sleeping quality and pattern, but the accuracy should be under review, there are two common way to track sleep, I have explained this in the previous post. In this product, I think (but not sure), it is using the accelerometer inside your phone to track the your movement during your sleep. However, the mobile phone in this case, is on a docking station not on the bed, very unlikely to detect any movement that is occurred on the mattress, but this is one of the key feature to the mobile app Philips has provided. 

So the question now is, how do I differentiate this Philips Wake-Up light from my own idea, I think there is some similarity between the two, but the main focus of the two are not the same. Wake-Up light is not designed to change a person's behaviour but to suit their lifestyle. 


The product allows the user to customize many features. But to me and my idea, I mainly wish to change the people's behaviour. The sunsets simulation is identical to my idea when the light dims and head droops, but the simulation from Philips starts when the phone is docking on the station in the evening, this will only happen when the person is ready to sleep. My project on the other hand, is for reminding people who has NOT yet gone to sleep. You see the difference? One is purely suiting the user, the other is changing the user, and this links back to my thesis where Marc Hassenzahl stated that "convenience will not instill change but friction will."







Thursday 1 October 2015

FMP: Sleep Deprivation Caused By Artificial Lights

Irregular sleep pattern is one of the most common bad habit modern citizens have, ever since the nightclubs were invented, human sleeping time has been shifted by artificial lights, this including household lights, mobiles, laptops and such. 





Circadian rhythm is any biological process that displays an endogenous, entrainable oscillation of about 24 hours. These 24-hour rhythms are driven by a circadian clock, and they have been widely observed in plants, animals, fungi, and cyanobacteria. I am not going to go too deep about circadian rhythm as it covers a huge range of biology. In simple term, Circadian rhythm is directly connected to our sleeping pattern and it can be affected easily.





Researchers say. The artificial light emitted by these devices signals our brain to stay awake, as it grows accustomed to thinking light equates to daytime. Our natural circadian rhythms become disjointed, and as a result, our brain produces less of the hormone melatonin, which is produced in the absence of light and helps regulate sleep.


"We think that the advent of electric lighting has significantly impacted upon sleep-wake patterns," Professor Shantha Rajaratnam, from Monash University's School of Psychology and Psychiatry "But with the proliferation of electronic devices that emit light we are expecting that these problems will increase."






Due to this effect, a irregular circadian rhythm could lead to some severe consequences, it could causes several types of cancer (breast and prostate cancer), debilities, heart diseases and obesity. 

The researches are clear that all the artificial lights has a certain level of disruption to human circadian rhythm, it is almost impossible to shield yourself from artificial lights in a city (that means you will have to shut down all the light-emitting sources including cars on the street and other people's lighting products). Right here I am not suggesting that I have the idea for adjusting entire human race's circadian rhythm, I am suggesting to use a persuasion to convince people to be on bed at a regular pattern, without forcing or by any means of rewards/punishments. 

We know the problem, and since the problem will be almost impossible to overcome, we can only then choose a different way to work the issue out, even the method has not directly related to the cause of such problem.