Hello.
I'm excited to present our work titled Sleep Planning with Awari
uncovering the materiality of body rhythms using research through design.
My name is Kasper Karlgren and I'm presenting the work
on behalf of myself and Donald McMillan at Stockholm University.
This work is centered around a set of workshops
and interviews with people who sleep outside
the norm and the design process of Awari: A prototype of a web based interface
where users can explore possible outcomes from decisions of sleep time
through interaction with a alertness forecasting system.
Self-tracking technology today is widely available through
wearables and smartphones, and sleep tracking in particular is provided
built-in using sensors, accelerometers and microphones, etc.
Tracking sleep using end-user technology has been seen as promising in terms
of long term tracking and identifying key elements that hinder sleep quality.
But the technology has also received critique for being hard to act upon,
and it's relying on the users to interpret the hard to interpret data,
in particular in its focus on general sleep scores and sleep phases
instead of caring of influencable factors of sleep.
This work takes an opposite approach, where we explore how sleep technology
could be reframed around actions
from learning from people who need and take action with their sleep.
We call these non-normative sleepers.
Our method includes both a overarching Research through
design process with the prototype of Awari and a set of four workshops
with 2 to 3 participants and six interviews.
This participants were recruited for being non-normative sleepers,
including shift workers represented by nurses and bartenders and sleep
hackers who were focused on structuring their sleep around planned naps.
These
sessions were conducted to let the participants share their attitude
towards sleep and identify how technology could support their lives and sleep.
The data from these sessions were coded using hybrid coding approach,
with analysis framed around learnings from marginal practices and to provide
new perspectives on the use of technology from extreme users.
From the empirical data collection, we identified three key points
on how sleep tracking could fit a less normative sleep schedule.
First off, more variable goal setting to fit their current situation.
As sleep varied around their work, so did their goals on sleep.
At times it was more important to make social life work
and at other times to recover from a tough week.
Second, a more flexible representation of sleep and waking hours as naps
and daytime sleep challenged the norm of when sleep happens
and breaks the segmentation of sleeping being transition between days.
And lastly,
a focus on the result of sleep rather than the process of sleep.
As the participants focus was often just on being alert when needed
or at times catching any sleep before work.
The design of our system underwent several changes,
with the final system being presented here in this image.
The system built on existing use of sleep tracking and calendars
to provide a overview of ones alertness in the coming days.
For the forecasting,
we have turned to a model called the three Process Model of Alertness.
Using the system, a user can explore different
sleep schedules, using a set of variable preferences
and a specific timestamp of when one wants to be alert.
These inform a reinforcement learning model to schedule, sleep
around one schedule and preferences, and by tweaking the variables
such as tolerance for being tired and speed of circadian change.
One can explore how different approaches and preferences would influence
one's coming sleep and alertness.
Based on the empirical data and the design, research
described three rhythms that govern processes such as sleep,
as well as different ways in which these can be influenced.
Not seeing alertness is one process, but several different rhythms, each
with their own properties guided the design process.
And we call these rhythms slow and cyclical pressure,
release and anchored rhythms.
We also categorize three sets of influences one has on these rhythms.
For more on these, please turn to paper.
The first rhythm described is the cyclical influence in our body.
These can be described in terms of length, with alertness
is bound by a circadian rhythm.
One of these properties of these rhythms is continuously
syncing and changing, but only to a certain small degree.
This rhythm is every day truncated or elongated
as a result of social and physical influences such as light,
the limit of one's daily influence both and minimal,
a maximum extent, which is both contextual and personal, was expressed
through the challenges of the participants and shifting between schedule.
As this was not quickly influenced, one can instead look at the daily change
vector playing over longer spans.
Designing for nudging cyclical rhythms can support preparation
of transition between work schedules and time zones and show trajectories
of the following influence of one shift. The pressure and release
rhythms is perhaps the most intuitive way of understanding sleep.
The longer one is awake, the higher the pressure and sleep becomes
until one sleeps and some or all of the pressure is released.
A general description of the rhythm can be structured through an understanding
of the rate of build up and the minimum maximum extent of the pressure.
The rhythm is established through the timing of the release section,
such as when one sleeps
and in the case of alertness this creates a intuitive
but clearly asymmetrical relation with the higher one's pressure
the higher the probability of one falling asleep.
This influence plays a role on how one approaches sleep, where it takes tolerance
of avoiding to take a nap or to sleep to make sure one can fall asleep later.
Lastly, the relationship between going from awake to sleep
can be described as a rhythm, and we describe this in the paper as a
anchored rhythm where the process of onset can be seen to happen through a ritual
is a series of action scaffolding the shift
This rhythm can be similarly elongate and truncated
and supported through increasing the steps in the process, but
ultimately is defined by the distance of alertness one has to manage.
This lens is grounded in the way
our participant described their actions in relation to falling asleep
as a sequence of action, and when they took place.
To many a goal is to truncate this as short and control as possible,
such as refraining
from caffeine and tobacco and stressful confrontations in the final hours
of one's working shift in order to be able to shorten the final sleep onset.
But this also shows that this rhythm can and will overlap with work hours,
which can be seen in terms of have also can be seen in terms
of how fast one can be up and running for work in the morning.
In discussion,
we suggest that making self-tracking technology focus on the future
self instead of past progress might increase the engagement
of the technology and possible going from tracking to noticing
how one can influence one's body processes.
Secondly, we propose a well-being related technology
to be built, allowing the end user to practically understand the model
by providing the abilities to hands on explore the results
in the context of one's own data as a way of addressing the data valence of
self-tracking.
Finally, this work presents its contribution through two main takeaways.
First, this presents a case of alternative ways
of rephrasing the use and problem solution orientation of sleep technology.
In the context of looking for action oriented sleep tracking technology,
we've reframed the technology from retrospection to alertness forecasting.
The second contribution is from our analysis stemming from both the workshops
and design cases, giving us a description of the rhythms and influences
that can describe a body process as a material of change.
And thank you for listening in.
If you have any question, please feel free to email it to me or Donald Macmillan.
Thank you.