A Sleep Expert in your Pocket
I worked with a major brand to help ideate on a sleep expert AI concept. I explored a blue-sky concept of using AI to help their customers improve sleep quality.
The Problem
During my contract with a major mattress company, I explored a blue-sky concept of using AI to help their customers improve sleep quality. Mattresses are just one part of sleep, and so being able to own the entire sleep experience opens up a multi-billion dollar market that the company wanted to explore.
The sleep category is a total addressable market of at least $100B annually, with 1 in 3 adults being sleep deprived. Many people described experiencing:
Inability to fall asleep
Inability to understand sleep data from wearables and other tools
Wanting vetted and reliable product recommendations for better sleep for their specific needs
The Process
From this customer idea, we dis
My job was to create an AI powered sleep expert that curates a sleep marketplace with a broad assortment of products and services. The goal of this work was to show the potential of the concept and the kinds of experiences a sleep AI could provide to customers.
We ideated using this tool potentially before or during their night's rest, to help them get better sleep or find resources to help them fall asleep.
I used Figma to wireframe and prototype a sample experience, showcasing key workflows this AI sleep expert could offer customers.
I created 3 main flows:
Real time sleep recommendations
Sleep data analysis
Product recommendations
How might we use AI to help the 1 in 3 U.S. adults who are sleep deprived?
The Solution
After finalizing flows with the team, I worked with a brand designer to help define a potential color scheme and brand feel for this concept. I prototyped these sample flows to showcase to C-Suite executives.
Our solution was a beautiful AI sleep expert trained by medical experts to provide you with real time, personal sleep data.
Reflections
This project was prescriptive in terms of using AI to solve a problem, rather than having a problem and discovering that AI could solve it.
This is the nature of business and politics, and every designer is going to experience this at least once in their career, and it's important to be honest when it happens.
This was also my first time designing with AI in mind, and it proved to be a challenge for me. Given the fast turn around and our lack of real customer data (just given the nature of a blue-sky project) I struggled with understanding if this type of experience was really useful.
However, I did enjoy getting explore this type of workflow at a high level and test my visual design skills. I do think AI could be useful in solving this problem, but I would have loved to get real feedback on this experience.