PhD candidate Dan Archer, from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington School of Health has designed a digital tool, driftoff, to help people sleep. He now needs you to download it before September, and help him analyse its success in helping with that simple but sometimes elusive goal of getting a good night’s kip.
Building on a suggestion by his supervisor Associate Professor Terry Fleming, who had previously worked with School of Engineering and Computer Science students toward a prototype, Dan enlisted the help of writers from the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) to provide the kind of content that would meet the aim of an app named driftoff.
School of Design staff also provided informal support, while a professional designer from outside the University devised the app with Dan and a computer science graduate involved in developing the software.
His research received $30,000 in funding from the Health Research Council.
“The first thing I did was survey people for their likes and dislikes with apps. I then took those findings into a series of workshops, then worked with a designer to see what it would look like, and then with further workshop participants refined how it should work.”
Dan’s initial survey of 240 participants over eight weeks found that 60 percent experienced mild sleep disturbances, while 30 percent reported moderate to severe issues. Many faced stress and anxiety, struggling to switch off due to financial, academic and social pressures – including living way from home for the first time.
Smartphone use at bedtime was a key factor –- up to 80 percent relied on their devices to relax, often watching videos or listening to audio. But this habit frequently disrupted sleep rather than aiding it.
Another popular form of media as sleep aid was listening to story content via podcasts.
Dan defines media as including video, streaming, spoken narrations like podcasts, audio books and sleep stories, music and radio. “The people I’ve talked to say they need the media to ease their minds otherwise they’re going to be awake till 2--3-4 am, so perhaps there’s a place for some kind of media and short video content?”
“It’s aggressive engagement, and I wondered is that the best kind of media to fall asleep to? Can we replace high engagement content, like really bright short-form video, with something more calming to help people go to sleep?”
Dan is also exploring how the emergence of podcasts in recent years may have changed people’s sleeping patterns with many choosing “weirdly upbeat” content, ranging from history to true crime, to get to sleep.
“Some people say they need that to prevent a negative mind from taking over,” he says. “It’s about finding a balance for a podcast that’s interesting enough to distract them but not so interesting that it keeps them awake, familiar enough that they don’t mind falling asleep listening to it but not so new and exciting.”
His point of difference from other sleep-focused apps, was inviting contributions from IIML, some already noted for their own work like graphic novelist Dylan Horrocks and actor Geraldine Brophy, along with other PhD students, to create content to appeal to a modern, everyday audience.
Dan is now looking to talk to those testing the app about how they are using the app, what stories they're listening to, and how they rate the app and its usability
To be part of Dan’s research, register, download and use the app, which will also send users three separate emails a week apart, asking them to reflect on their previous seven nights sleep.
Initial feedback suggests the app’s content is being well received. “Early users said they loved the content, but don’t know how it finished, as they fell asleep straight away!”
As a father of two, including a one-year-old, Dan’s research is extremely relevant to both his work and home life. “It’s a really big challenge to my sleep and my PhD!”
Go to the TVNZ app to see Dan talk about his research on the Breakfast programme of 22 July.