Design Brief #2: Multi Sensory Blanket Mini Prototype

Following this post of 'Sleep Inducing System', I'm testing out several experiments and the second one is a Multi Sensory Blanket. I chose blanket over pillow as I feel there is more to work with, based on the findings from the questionnaire.

After discussion with Dr Richard, Mason and friends, I realise that sleep induction is subjective to user's preferences. Some may find music helpful while some may find aromatherapy useful.

Based on the 'senses' analysis and research, I decided to shortlist the following ideas for testing,

1. Tactile stimulation with fidget play - it is similar to self soothing techniques such as twiddling -human fingertips are very sensitive. And I thought it might be useful to keep user's hands busy.

2.  Aromatherapy

3. Weighted blanket

4. Temperature

Here is the first mini prototype, I used cotton jersey leftover from my shirt tutorial

I designed the blanket to have openings so that user's hands can reach out for the fidget play, the columns are overlapped so that the openings do not gape too much.

Feedback that I received:
Harah and Jason mentioned that I should not be including everything in a blanket, it will be too much. What if some days users just want to have a regular blanket? So how do I create a blanket that can accommodate all the different sensorial elements?

Dr Richard also suggested that maybe I can do a pulsing blanket - instead of my pulsing light. So I've decided that whether its analog or digital testing, I should have a base blanket to test out the different sensorial approaches / add-ons

So for my V2,  I'm going to create a blanket with pockets for multi purposes, one that can be customised, washed, attachments are removable or it can just be used as a normal blanket. It also works as a foundation to do my testing - analog/digital.

As part of my open source practice, I will be sharing how to create the sensory attachments through tutorials and users can customise their blanket accordingly to their preferences.