Sleeby

This is the journey through a recent project that started as a personal endeavor and turned into a game-changing solution for new parents. I'll share how I tackled the issue, my role in it all, the challenges faced, and the impact made.

Understanding the problem

I wanted to understand why is being a new parent so difficult and what are the biggest pain points that I encounter. Since babies don't come with instruction manuals, life takes a U-turn when a little one arrives.

My role

It all began with a personal project that sparked during my master's program. As Product Designer and Team Lead on this journey, I was responsible for conducting research (user interviews, gathering data insights), ideating, prototyping, testing, API development handover, technical implementation (Hub). On the leadership front I took initiative to lead team meetings and design critiques, and of course timeline and project management throughout the journey.

Process overview

Of course, I had a great team to collaborate with, including 2 other designers and a developer, and the fortune of requesting design critiques from our highly experienced professors.

Our dream team

Lead Designer

Designers

Developer

Project's interesting bits

Research

I hit the research trail, talking to tired parents, getting insights from medical professionals, and throwing out a survey that got 127 answers. There was a common trend of people saying, I barely sleep, I'm exhausted. I can’t find the time to rest or have time for myself.

“It is not the pile of pending tasks that prevents them from getting proper rest, it is the lack of a structured routine that turns into a sleepless domino effect”

baby

Baby sleep is key

I understood that the key was on the baby's sleep because when the baby sleeps, the parents can rest, do chores and have time for themselves.

list-tree

Structure and routine

Goes out the window because there's a huge learning curve, a great need for flexibility, and a support network so a baby usually has more than one caregiver.

Hypothesis

I wanted to figure out what specific activities could make babies fall into a deep, peaceful sleep in a jiffy and then leverage that knowledge to help parents do these activities with precision. I started to think about how this knowledge-sharing structure would work and focused on 2 phases. First, collecting data on these activities, and understanding their performance because babies are very difficult to interview. Second, using that knowledge to guide parents to help them perform the activities.

Ideation and Prototyping

Here's where the fun began. First I prototyped for data collection phase. My goal was to monitor a given activity and then understand how the baby slept afterward.

Ludic development

Creating a natural and playful connection between the baby and Sleeby

Accuracy and fidelity

Capturing reliable activity-specific data during sleeping routines

Sleep quality

Analyzing the routine performance, creating benchmarks, setting goals

I came up with 3 objects: a toy, a wearable pin, and a mattress strip, and I performed some early concept validation and made 3 findings:

lightbulb

Aha moment

I wanted to understand how to produce the ideal sleeping environment for the baby. I discovered that mimicking the womb environment was the key.

hands-holding-child

Parental product adoption

Parents weren't thrilled about strapping wearables on their little ones especially having skin-to-skin contact.

circle-exclamation

Data reliability

Toys aren’t a reliable source of data because the baby may not always have the it with them.

Solution

How do babies sleep?

Womb-like environment Tight wrap (think a swaddle or a burrito 🌯) Rocking movement White-noise sounds

The result? The sleeping swaddle – inside of it, there are sensors that understand movement intensity, duration, and sleeping quality. Portable, washable, waterproof and naturally incorporated into the baby’s sleeping routine.

Sleeping Swaddle

The Hub

As a counterpart to the data collection in the Swaddle, I envisioned the Hub – a modular concept focusing sharing the insights with parents and guiding them through the activities.

Picture a Control Center triggering optimized routines, and then individual modules for each activity (singing, rocking, you name it).

Each module interaction is designed to adapt to low-light and busy-hands conditions by being foot-activated.

It's like Lego for baby care, focusing on retaining the user and keeping them engaged by evolving as the baby grows.

The Hub

As a counterpart to the data collection in the Swaddle, I envisioned the Hub – a modular concept focusing sharing the insights with parents and guiding them through the activities.

Picture a Control Center triggering optimized routines, and then individual modules for each activity (singing, rocking, you name it).

Each module interaction is designed to adapt to low-light and busy-hands conditions by being foot-activated.

It's like Lego for baby care, focusing on retaining the user and keeping them engaged by evolving as the baby grows.

Knowledge sharing network

Household system

Global system

User Validation

At this point my fully functional prototype was ready, so I performed user testing with new parents, here are some of the key learnings:

waveform

Rhythm interaction

There was room for tweaking the Rocking Rhythm Guide's colors, adding a dash of three-dimensionality

puzzle

Modularity expansion

The Swaddle had the potential to become modular as well tracking more even more activities and having different kinds of wraps for sizes for different babies across the world

Curios for more?

Project's Outcomes

Sleeby became a

Design competition winner

at Design4Parents, a European-wide contest

SUS Validation resulted in

80-85 percentile

placing the project in above average usability score

Project was selected as the

Top of the class

and remains an on-going personal project.