We are looking for feedback regarding a product we have launched on Kickstarter.com. In no way is this a solicitation for purchase but rather we are looking for suggestions and ideas of how we can improve our product. We strongly feel our solution is much better than anything currently on the market but recognize we are struggling to meet our funding goal. Please feel free to be brutally honest, we would rather receive criticism than praise any day!
We are not opposed to a design pivot so any suggestions no matter how far fetched are appreciated.
Pretty neat concept. Certainly better than the wristwatch equivalents.
From a QS perspective, I’d like to easily visualize how much I’ve moved during sleep. Some nights I wake up in the same position I went to sleep in (hence the expression “sleeping like a log”?), with the comforter in almost the same place and orientation. Other nights I move. I wonder if in the first case I don’t move at all, or I do move but return to the initial position.
On a final note, I know of two other solutions that work without touching the user:
Apps that sense your motion via the mattress if you leave the phone on the bed
[quote]As you approach the last few hours of your sleep, the sleep phases become shorter and generally take about one hour. When you are in a light sleep phase, you will wake up even to music playing at a low volume but you will feel refreshed. However, if you wake up during a deep sleep phase, you will hear the alarm only if it is really loud and waking up in this stage will still make you feel like you got hit by a hammer.
So how do you make sure you wake up during light sleep? During the last few hours of sleep, a sleep cycle takes about one hour, so light sleep and deep sleep alternate every 30 minutes or so. Let’s say you need to wake up at 7am and you set your alarm to that time. Now we program an additional pre-alarm at 6:30am at a much lower volume.
This is so simple that we are almost embarrassed to write about it. But the effect is huge: If, at 6:30am you are in deep sleep, you will not hear this pre-alarm. At 7am, you will then wake up to the regular alarm. However, if you are in light sleep at 6:30am, you will wake up to the pre-alarm, refreshed even though you got half an hour less sleep than your regular alarm time would have allowed (sleeping that extra half hour would have put you back into deep sleep).[/quote]
Dan, many thanks for the reply! The wristwatch and headband options are what inspired us to look for non-contact solutions. In addition when testing the cheaper alternatives(such as the Sleep Cycle App) that track mattress movement by placing your smart phone under your pillow or at the corner of your bed we noticed:
that they require tedious nightly setup.
the app has a hard time distinguishing the users’ movement vs. a partner.
on occasion the phone was accidentally knocked off the bed.
and phone calls, emails, or texts would disturb the user.
Obviously these mattress solutions are in a completely different price bracket but we still feel we have a big competitive advantage. We don’t explicitly state this on our KS page but we do try and address it in our Press Release.
The “GentleAlarm” uses the crescendo effect to slowly lull the user out of deep sleep. We have received several requests for something similar so it will likely be added to our list of features.
With much regret we failed to show in our video how a user could visualize how they have slept throughout the night. I think this confusion has probably allowed many would-be backers slip through the cracks. The motion sensor is designed to not only wake you up at your lightest sleep but also track your motion throughout the night and provide a visual report the next day; this is on-par with most of our competition. Its hard to tell how big of an impact this had on our campaign but I fear it was significant.
Thank you for the feedback, this will definitely help us improve our pitch!
1)Video content and editing quality - OK but not fantastic. Soundtrack less than meh.
2)Emotional appeal - low. You want users to feel amped, like they are part of some larger vision.
Paint a picture of how their lives are transformed.
3)ID - meh. Low cost vacuum formed appearance with hard angles that is very large for a phone stand.
4)iApp looks good. Where’s the social?