On May 3, 2024, PhD student Kasper Karlgren will present his ongoing work on “Tracking and hacking sleep: Designing for non-normative sleepers”. The seminar takes place at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV), Stockholm University.

Respondent: Kasper Karlgren, DSV
Opponent: Anna Sigridur Islind, Reykjavik University, Iceland
Main supervisor: Barry Brown, DSV
Supervisor: Donald McMillan, DSV
Professor closest to the subject: Jakob Tholander, DSV

Contact information for Kasper Karlgren

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Abstract

With sleep-tracking technology being built-in into many available smart systems and wearables, the notion of a user of these systems gets larger. The development still focuses on traditional 8 hours-per-night schedules – overlooking the varied nature of people’s sleep – and focuses on metrics that are difficult to influence such as sleep phases, making the systems unactionable for a large portion of the users.

With this work, I investigate what sleep tracking can do for users by studying what actions and challenges already are employed by people. Using a combination of qualitative methods and design approaches I study how people ‘hack’ their sleep, what challenges emerge from sleeping differently, and how sleep technology is used in everyday life.

The findings and contributions of this work include (1) rich descriptions of how users share and discuss sleep hacks in online communities (2) insights and reflections on the social factors of sleeping outside norm hours (3) how sleep, and near-sleep technologies, such as sleep tracking, can be designed to be inclusive of those with non-normative sleep patterns.

Concluding the contributions, I propose a tentative strong concept called design of the self – a way to design technology that centres on the actions and varying goals the user and their bodies. In discussion, this work describes related to the notions of bodies and users in HCI (human–computer interaction), how changes in modern work arrangements call for new technology to support the arrangement of sleep and life rhythms, and reflections on norms and soft-paternalism of sleep tracking systems.