Bed God | Yijie

OVERVIEW

Timeline

Mar-May 2020

Role

Interaction Designer, Creative Technologist, Visual Designer, Coding

Output

An interactive device, A set of cards, Videos

A NEW RELIGION TO ENCOURAGE USER'S

SELF-DISCIPLINE TO A BETTER SLEEP

Purpose

According to the 2018 U.S Insufficient Sleeping Report, 34.5% of Americans are suffering from their poor sleeping. The realization of insomnia has grown. When research online, the “sleeping problem” has 1,650,000,000 results.

However, with plenty of advice and resource, still over-consuming the limited sleeping time to other things turns the key point of insomnolence into the hardness of following scientific tips and develop better habits that can do good to improve sleeping quality. I decided to start my solution by creating a new religion with the connection of the content, environment, and spiritual support.

In order to encourage users to do more good habits for better sleeping quality while take "bad-sleeping" easy, I create an interactive device that allows users to call for Bed God's answer when they meet problems

Methodology

I researched on self-discipline and outside emotional control, as well as interviewing several believers and engaged in their community events. I made two versions of the prototype and finally comes with a physical interactive device.

Methodology & Tools: Research, Interview, Prototype, After Effect, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Arduino,

PRECEDENT RESEARCH

BEDIBLE

BBC documentary film

“10 things you need to know about sleep”

&BookPowerful Sleep: Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock

I decided to develop from the scientific content first, so I made the notes from the film “10 things you need to know about sleep” and looked over the book Powerful Sleep to understand our body status regarding sleeping.

When I’m making the summary, I can feel it’s not easy to follow these scientific tips. The full faith of these scientific tips are based on a detailed understanding of sleeping, and the good sleeping habits require for a better discipline

Creating a Religion

Based on my research, I decided to create a religion, Bed God

For the individual, it encourages discipline & loyalty; For a group of people, it will reach a wider spread;

Itself can be convincing without explanation while it can be passed on and always welcome new technology.

Edit content of Bedible

Bedible is the content of Bed god.

I translated my 17 tips into a religious style that asks for a believer’s self- discipline, faith, loyalty.

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Pure water can make your daytime ritual deliver faster to your heart, where the Bed God lives. He will decide if he should go to your dream based on the understanding of what you did and what you think.

Exercising in the daytime will show Bed God you have worked hard in the day time and deserve a good sleep.

Make your day & night clear so Bed God won’t be confused on his way to you. Enough light in the daytime is a symbol of the daytime. Even in the room, enough room light can be helpful.

Bed God appreciates and welcomes your random nap to show your loyalty without any preparation. However, a sleeping ritual never ever can be replaced by a nap. You will lose Bed God if you try to play the trick.

For a short duration, you need to eat carbs to show your welcome of Bed God. Bed God appreciate vegetable and labor collection food.

You should prepare well, reduce your in-body burden is a way to let your body tell Bed God you’ve stopped adding burden to your body.

To be at your best, take a warm bath before going to bed. Higher body temperature will give Bed God a calling of your enthusiasm.

Using some comfortable smell to build an environment to welcome Bed God. Bed God is in your heart, the good smell will please Bed God while making yourself pleased.

If you feel well, show your worship exercise to enhance your preparation.

Bed is a place only for sleeping. Stay back if you’re not prepared. Unrelated stuff are seriously banned from this area.

The most important ritual - sleeping ritual, is preparing for welcoming Bed God. The Bed God may appear every 1.5hrs, so keep your sleeping ritual as a multiple of 1.5hrs.

Complete sleeping ritual at your fixed ritual period. The duration should be fixed as well. If you can’t fall asleep, stay on the bed with empty emotion, Bed God will hear you. If you still want to sleep after your ritual period, it’s your punishment. Leave your bed.

Sleeping on stomaches will let blur your breathing pace, and blood fluid, which will confuse Bed God to figure out your sleeping stage, which means he might don’t know when to come to improve your sleeping quality.

A difference in body temperature and feet temperature helps your body cools down, then your blood fluid will getting slower, which will be the symbol to let Bed God know it’s time to help you.

Bed God is living in your heart. When the location of eyeballs getting centered, means that you’re focusing on something, and you brain won’t settle down to a proper emotion for Bed God.

A regular sleeping ritual is a requirement of a believer. Keep your fixed sleeping ritual schedule is your discipline. Keep it during weekends.

If you still can't feel the help from Brd God, talk with a doctor. They can figure out which self-ritual you did wrong, or even plan some ritual only for you.

Getting enough pure water during day time.

Keep exercising

Getting enough sunshine at daytime

Take a nap if needed during 2-5pm. Try to not from 8-12 am, can’t be from 6-8 pm.

Eat carbs for dinner to better sleep (protein will wake you up)

No Caffeine, alcohol, or big meal before 4hrs of going to bed.

One hour before sleeping, take a bath. The reduction of your temperature will make you sleepy.

The smell of herbs will help.

Tense relax muscle exercise

The unrelated things can’t be on the bed

Keep a full sleep cycle.

Touch bed during a fixed period with fixed hours.

No sleeping on stomaches

Sleeping with a foot/both feet uncovered

Try not to let your eyeballs focusing on the middle.

Don’t sleep overhead during weekends

Consult with a doctor if needed.

METHODOLOGY

BEDOT CARDS

I created the rule for readable Bedot Cards, to encourage believers’ better understanding of content.

The dotted circular outline is the symbol of the daily schedule. With this symbol, the habit should be scheduled at a regular time.

The triangle is the symbol of human.

The combination of shapes will show some natural objects, like water, flower, carb food, etc

The hollow/solid status of dots also shows the people’s status, like awake/fall asleep, or release and taking something,

Regular Schedule

Flower & Carbon food

Awakeness or sleepness

Human Action

DIGITAL Q&A BEDGOD

Creating a Religion

1.0 - Ritual | Atmosphere

The anthropologist Victor Turner explained the ritual with "liminality," the etymology of which means "threshold." In Turner's discourse, ritual sits in the transition stage and the intermediate state of a person's transition from one state to another.

The role of ritual is most easily understood from the perspective of time dimensions.

I defined all the right habits in Bedible to rituals, and the real sleeping to be the most essential and core ritual, "sleeping ritual." Small rituals can show your respect, and increase the quality of sleeping ritual, while Bed God will only come to your sleeping ritual to directly improve your sleeping quality and give you a good dream.

A good environment is a reminder to transition the mind into a new status. I want to let believers build their own inner worlds by completing the ritual, to indicate the ritual’s importance. Usually, the rituals should have a traditional form, and guide believers to follow the ritual to be in a comfortable zone. However, relaxation is an essential step to have a good sleep. I don’t mean to make small rituals to be a limitation of users, so I didn’t set any form of rituals in the Bedible. The meaning and power of the Bed God can still be delivered by the Bedot. What’s more, the invisible character of Bed God can enlarge the range of control, and increase the rate of introspection.

However, the Bed God can’t only be supported by open-form rituals. For believers, ritual has a role of psychological comfort. More importantly, it can maintain the stability of the whole religion. I created an extra action, "turning the light on", to be the only form of ritual. When the light from dark to bright, the environment is completely built, and believers are well prepared to start a new status.

Sleeping is the most important ritual in my bedible, but I never limit any ritual forms because I know everyone has a different comfort zone. So the only ritual that all the will be quite similar to all the users is lighting up the Bed God, it can also build a special atmosphere at the same time so believers can better engage in that emotion.

2.0 - Quarantine Version

At this time, for the believers who can’t try the physical trigger, the mini version is the other choice, that can give you some advice based on the real time you ask bed god.