The Cushy Body Pillow

Summary

The Cushy is a multi-sensory sleep aid created to deliver somatic experiences through various senses and enhance the sleeping quality of users with sleep difficulties. The body pillow utilizes sound via built-in speakers, motion via neck massagers and heartbeat pulsing device, sight via bedroom light, and touch via heating and cooling pads to engage with users and to facilitate relaxation and sleep. Our approach considered the mind-body connection, as emphasized by Hook's Soma Design principle, highlighting the importance of both the body and the mind.

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The problem being addressed

Getting quality sleep is important for your physical and mental well-being. Our project, The Cushy, was created because it addresses an issue that affects many people. Through interviewing our team, we found a pattern of struggling to get quality sleep due to several reasons, ranging from stress, noise and comfort levels, muscle aches, and missing their partner. Numerous literature reviews validated these challenges and helped us identify key ingredients that contribute to a night of quality sleep. 

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Role

As a designer, I was involved in every stage of the project, from the initial research, inspiration and planning to the creation of the product.

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The design process

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What Inspires Us?

We investigated how we have been tackling our various sleep issues, such as using sleep podcasts or music. We also sought inspiration from various solutions in the market, from nursery buddy toys with soothing heartbeats to sleep masks that block out light and play music to your ears. All of this enabled us to develop features we included in our body pillow prototype to help users sleep better by targeting different sensory experiences that can be customized according to their needs

How did we Ideate?

After our inspiration and research phase, we conducted a group ideation exercise where we each sketched out ideas to help deliver a range of somatic experiences while enhancing our users' sleep. 

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What does our prototype look like?

We ultimately decided on the idea of creating a body pillow, as it offered the most flexibility in terms of the features it could possess and the comfort it could provide through its "U" shape and squishiness. We carefully outlined the placement of each feature in a detailed sketch, including measurements for the fabrics, as we had to build the pillow from scratch. 

How did we make it?

To piece the pillow together, we used a sewing machine to sew the fabric together by following our measurement document. We created pouches to hold our removable gadgets, such as massagers for various tension points, a noise machine with speakers on both sides of the pillow, a heartbeat simulator, and aromatherapy with removable cases. This process was iterative, as we tested different placements of the features to optimize the sleeping experience for our users.   

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Issues with measuring 

Due to having Inadequate measuring tools, the outlining lining of the fabric was quite challenging as we had only a few rulers. Purchasing a long yardstick and measuring tapes really helped our group effectively measure the outline of our pillow and pouches without causing misalignment.

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Challenges with sewing 

Due to our unfamiliarity with the sewing machine, we encountered difficulties striking the threads while piecing the pouches together. We also accidentally sewed the pouch on the wrong side, affecting the user's ability to remove gadgets. We fixed this with a seam ripper and switched to using Velcro and tape for easy slip-and-slide of items for our users.

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Our team learned that through our design, we could challenge the common notion of body pillows as static products that can’t be tailored to the user’s individual needs. Our idea was proven to be successful, as our peers were amazed by the soothing experience Cushy was able to create as a possible solution to some of their sleeping problems. However, it was brought up that one size might not fit all, as some users would find it too big for them.

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Our project taught me the importance of designing solutions as a UX designer by considering human sensory capabilities, the mind-body connection, and accessibility in terms of size when creating a product to provide a comfortable sleeping experience to our users.

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