A physical alarm designed to get you out of bed every time
Industry
Consumer
Sleep tech
Health & wellness
Role
Co-founder
Product designer
Team
Skye Gaertner (co-founder)
Tongfei Zhu (design engineer)
Tools
Figma
Protopie
Timeline
2024-now
PROBLEM
As college students, it’s hard to wake up when you say you will
It’s not that we don’t want to wake up; it’s that nothing is designed to help us follow through.
Mornings set the rhythm
Mornings are the first touchpoint, where intention meets reality. But, it’s also the first thing sacrificed.
Demands pile up before the day even starts, costing us the quiet that could’ve set it right.
IDEATION
Designing a system people can’t ignore
To design something reliable, we first had to understand why everything else breaks.
Our guiding question: How do we ensure a user is physically out of bed?
Exploring failure points
We tested phone-based alarms, wearables, and external triggers and found a recurring issue.
If it’s removable, tappable, or near the pillow, users will silence it half-asleep - and it fails.
Converging on the right medium
Mattress level haptics unlocked a new path.
Strong vibrations without noise enabled wake-ups that aren’t tied to screens or willpower.
DESIGN DECISIONS
Turning insights into hardware
Our guiding principles: comfort, friction-less, and durability
Refining the form factor
A sensing band that wraps around
It uses pressure sensors to detect is someone is still lying down. If there’s weight on the bed, the system knows the user hasn’t gotten up.
A detachable screen that docks
A small screen snaps into place to set your alarm time. Dock it, and the time is set. After that, it stays silent until 5 minutes before.
The wake-up experience
PROOF-OF-CONCEPT
Building the MVP, in public
Our goal is to gather fast feedback, build with an audience, and hold ourselves accountable.
ADDITIONAL EXPLORATIONS
Plenty more lives in the archive
Reach out if you want to see earlier explorations, more of the thinking involved, or our future plans for womp.