Hi Everyone!
I am a final year design student at Loughborough University currently undertaking my final year project.
At the start of the year whilst researching for possible ideas that I could explore for my project I began researching ways to help people suffering from dementia maintain a healthy sleep cycle. This led to bright light therapy and the beneficial effect it can have helping sundowning and maintaining a heathy circadian rhythm.
During the research I also learned the term 'burnout' and read abut the physical toll caring takes on the caregiver. After reading about it I knew I wanted to design a product that could be beneficial for both the carer and cared-for.
After reading numerous scientific articles about bright light therapy and aromatherapy and the positive effects they can have, I was surprised to find no published research about the combined use of both treatments. This gave me the idea for my project.
A device that combines controlled doses of bright light with aroma, using two senses to maintain a healthy sleep cycle.
The bright lights and aroma would helped the cared for and the aroma would hopefully create calmer atmosphere for the carer.
The device uses two sets of lights one set of 6000k light (cool white) and one set of 3000K (warm white) representing morning and evening. Inside the device is a two part aroma diffuser, this is so different aromas could be smelled at different times of the day for example. In the morning a grapefruit essential oil could be set which is known to increase alertness and mental activity and in the evening lavender could be set to relax and promote sleep.
The device can be programmed to come on at different times of the day using an app for an iphone or ipad such as coming on early in the morning increasing the brightness to mimic the sun rising and vice versa for the sun setting.
Many of the articles about studying the effects of bright light research used much higher levels of light than those that are available to purchase. I noticed that the commercial models emitting 10,000 lux (the intensity of light required) at distances of around 20-30cm which I thought could be improved.
At double the distance the intensity of light is quartered which effectively makes them very bright lamps.
They all looked quite clinical and not something you would really want in you house, I wanted to design something that you would want for its form and function and not just for its function.
I wanted to increase this distance so something more practical, so I made my device 2x more powerful than those currently available using 16 15W LED bulbs giving a power output of 240W versus 160W of the most powerful product currently available.
As there is a demand for more research to be carried out into these alternative therapies I added 4 infra-red sensors to the product to detect sleep disturbances. These instances are recorded and presented as a graph in the app. These can be turned off if you didn't want to have this data recorded. The aim of gathering this information would be to present what levels of brightness works best, when are the lights being used, for what duration and are they being used in conjunction with a particular oil. Gathering this information from many of these devices could develop these forms of treatment and would build a picture if these forms of treatment are more effective together rather than by themselves.
I would really appreciate any feedback you have on my project love it or hate it all comments are welcome. Everything you say would really help me out.
I do not have enough points to post a picture of the product will I will as soon as I have enough points.
Thanks for reading!
Oliver
I am a final year design student at Loughborough University currently undertaking my final year project.
At the start of the year whilst researching for possible ideas that I could explore for my project I began researching ways to help people suffering from dementia maintain a healthy sleep cycle. This led to bright light therapy and the beneficial effect it can have helping sundowning and maintaining a heathy circadian rhythm.
During the research I also learned the term 'burnout' and read abut the physical toll caring takes on the caregiver. After reading about it I knew I wanted to design a product that could be beneficial for both the carer and cared-for.
After reading numerous scientific articles about bright light therapy and aromatherapy and the positive effects they can have, I was surprised to find no published research about the combined use of both treatments. This gave me the idea for my project.
A device that combines controlled doses of bright light with aroma, using two senses to maintain a healthy sleep cycle.
The bright lights and aroma would helped the cared for and the aroma would hopefully create calmer atmosphere for the carer.
The device uses two sets of lights one set of 6000k light (cool white) and one set of 3000K (warm white) representing morning and evening. Inside the device is a two part aroma diffuser, this is so different aromas could be smelled at different times of the day for example. In the morning a grapefruit essential oil could be set which is known to increase alertness and mental activity and in the evening lavender could be set to relax and promote sleep.
The device can be programmed to come on at different times of the day using an app for an iphone or ipad such as coming on early in the morning increasing the brightness to mimic the sun rising and vice versa for the sun setting.
Many of the articles about studying the effects of bright light research used much higher levels of light than those that are available to purchase. I noticed that the commercial models emitting 10,000 lux (the intensity of light required) at distances of around 20-30cm which I thought could be improved.
At double the distance the intensity of light is quartered which effectively makes them very bright lamps.
They all looked quite clinical and not something you would really want in you house, I wanted to design something that you would want for its form and function and not just for its function.
I wanted to increase this distance so something more practical, so I made my device 2x more powerful than those currently available using 16 15W LED bulbs giving a power output of 240W versus 160W of the most powerful product currently available.
As there is a demand for more research to be carried out into these alternative therapies I added 4 infra-red sensors to the product to detect sleep disturbances. These instances are recorded and presented as a graph in the app. These can be turned off if you didn't want to have this data recorded. The aim of gathering this information would be to present what levels of brightness works best, when are the lights being used, for what duration and are they being used in conjunction with a particular oil. Gathering this information from many of these devices could develop these forms of treatment and would build a picture if these forms of treatment are more effective together rather than by themselves.
I would really appreciate any feedback you have on my project love it or hate it all comments are welcome. Everything you say would really help me out.
I do not have enough points to post a picture of the product will I will as soon as I have enough points.
Thanks for reading!
Oliver
and is beautiful to look at. I would agree with Beate's comment that simplicity is the key- I live alone and would struggle to work with an app unless everything was set up for me. 
