Improving sleep-wake schedule using sleep behavior visualization and a bedtime alarm

Abstract

Humans need sleep, along with food, water and oxygen, to survive. With about one-Third of our lives spent sleeping, there has been increased attention and interest in under-standing sleep and the overall state of our"sleep health."The rapid adoption of smartphones along with a growing num-ber of sleep tracking applications for these devices presents an opportunity to use this device to encourage better sleep hygiene. Procrastinating going to bed and being unable to stick to a consistent bedtime can lead to inadequate amount of sleep time which in turn affects quality of life and over-all wellbeing. To help address this problem, we developed two applications, Lights Out and Sleep Wallpaper, which provide a sensor-based bedtime alarm and a connected pe-ripheral display on the wallpaper of the user's mobile phone to promote awareness with sleep data visualization. In this paper, we describe Lights Out and Sleep Wallpaper and re-sults from a two-week field study with 19 participants who have a variety of sleep contexts. Results indicate that a sim-ple bedtime alarm and a peripheral display with sleep data visualization can be an effective method for improving sleep consistency.