yoro

Sound Design

2 weeks project, Spring 2019, MFA Umeå Institute of Design

Team project together with:

Connie Jehu (Interaction Design), Paolo Camerin (Interaction Design) and Daniel Diermeier (Advanced Product Design)

Challenge

This project was made during a course called Industrial Sound Design, where the students from Advanced Product Design (APD) collaborate with the Interaction Design students (IXD) at Umeå Institute of Design. The focus of the course is to explore and design sounds together with a design and form.

Approach

During the project, we focused on the topic of how screens before bed-time contribute to sleep problems, where we wanted to explore how we can provide a “no screen time zone” before going to bed.

Meet Yoro

The charging device and lamp that supports you to put the phone away in exchange for reading a book before going to bed.

Interactions with light and sound

We wanted to express a shift of an energy transformation with the audio and light when the user interacts with the device. When putting the phone on the “charging-bed” the light and sounds will express that the energy from the phone is transferred to the device to produce a reading light. The opposite happens in the morning when the phone is fully charged and removed, to show that the energy is transferred back to the phone again. 

Placing the book

Light: The device is lighting up the book

Light emitted from electronic screens contributes to sleep problems, which in turn, increases the risk of a range of health problems

During our research we interviewed several people and run a survey to find out about sleeping habits and rituals. Most people we spoked to were aware that screen time before bed was not good for their sleep, but they found it difficult to tear themselves away. 

Uses their phone as the device before going to sleep

Keeps their phone next to the bed at night

The activity they wanted to do instead, was reading a book

Can we use the importance of the phone to foster self-motivation to read before going to sleep?

During our research, we interviewed a wide range of people, mainly students, asking them about their sleeping habits and their digital devices. We found out that many people would like to do something else instead of using the phone before going to bed, but would not want to have something telling them to put it away.

Exploring the phone as a “trigger”

We tested the concept of getting something in return for your phone on users and found that people reacted positively to the idea. The acting of placing the phone to charge by “putting it to bed” acknowledges the importance it places in your life but shows that the interactions with it can foster the development of other activities, like reading.

A big part of the project was to design sounds and combine that into the interaction of the physical product. Together we built a fully working prototype with sounds and light that we designed ourselves. This was a great team collaboration taking advantages of the different skills and roles, Interaction design VS Product design.