For students on a primarily residential campus, sleep mostly happens in residence halls. In order to gain a better understanding of sleep environments and the nuances of navigating roommate relationships, I interviewed students in their rooms.

There is also a tremendous amount of literature surrounding sleep. I read as much as I could, and transcribed information from interviews and the literature review to post-its for synthesis & analysis.

During research, a graduate student working in the sleep lab told me about different types of rest: sleep, napping, and ‘wakeful rest.’ Although there is no substitute for sleep, each form of rest has measurable benefits. Ideation sketches explored lots of different ideas for different types of rest that would be implemented in environments all over campus.

I distilled three promising concepts into large-scale posters that were hung in the conference room of the McDonald Center for Student Well-Being. As part of a class visit, students reviewed the posters and wrote comments directly on the dry-erase walls. This feedback was photographed, and helped guide the direction of the project.

Ultimately it became obvious that the biggest opportunity was to redesign the sleep kit that was currently available at the McDonald Center for Student Well-Being. While well-intentioned, the kit was literally a mixed bag of sleep aids that may or may not work for individual students.

In talking with students, I found that they really valued the input and expectations of their university. This made it clear that the school has a chance to set an expectation around healthy sleep habits that ultimately enable students to do their best work.

The redesigned sleep kit starts with a package mailed to incoming students. The package includes messaging as well as aroma therapy spray, which can be spritzed onto your pillow and used as a sleep cue.

If the sleep cue is used both before and after students arrive on campus, it gives them a better opportunity to get good sleep during the transition to school.

The main sleep kit is meant to be waiting for every student when they arrive in their residence hall rooms. This presence supports the messaging that the university values student sleep.

The kit itself is designed to tuck under a mattress or wrap around a headboard, offering easy access to sleep aids (including the included eye mask and aroma therapy spray) and convenient storage for phones and other electronic devices. The usefulness of the kit means that it remains visible, acting as a continuous reminder to students of the importance of sleep.