Sonic Blankets: exploring the use of sound-augmented blankets for relaxation and sleep
Pages 511 - 524
Abstract
This study explores the effectiveness of a sound-augmented blanket as a relaxation tool and potential sleep enhancement aid. Recognizing the crucial role of relaxation and quality sleep in overall well-being, we investigated the integration of sound technology into an everyday item for relaxation. The designed artifact delivers real-time auditory stimulation modulated by the user’s movements. Our research consisted of two phases: (1) an online survey to identify sound preferences conducive to relaxation, and (2) a qualitative user study evaluating interactions with the artifact. Results from the survey informed the sound design for the artifact, which was subsequently tested with three sounds inspired by Ocean Waves, Traffic Noise, and Crickets. Participants exhibited a preference for the Ocean Waves’ sound engine. Despite the need, reported by some participants, for a short familiarization time, prolonged interactions with the blanket resulted in a perceived increase in relaxation and positive experiences among all participants, with 7 out of 10 expressing willingness to use the blanket for sleep. The study underscores the potential of the sound-augmented blanket as a relaxation aid and potential assistance for sleep enhancement. Further iterations of this prototype will focus on sound personalization and usability.
References
[1]
Jesper J Alvarsson, Stefan Wiens, and Mats E Nilsson. 2010. Stress recovery during exposure to nature sound and environmental noise. International journal of environmental research and public health 7, 3 (2010), 1036–1046.
[2]
Margarida Baltazar and Daniel Västfjäll. 2020. Songs perceived as relaxing: Musical features, lyrics, and contributing mechanisms. In International Conference: Psychology and Music–Interdisciplinary Encounters. Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade.
[3]
Navya Baranwal, K Yu Phoebe, and Noah S Siegel. 2023. Sleep physiology, pathophysiology, and sleep hygiene. Progress in cardiovascular diseases 77 (2023), 59–69.
[4]
Herbert Benson and Miriam Z Klipper. 1975. The relaxation response. Morrow New York.
[5]
Baptiste Bouvier. 2024. Saillance auditive: de la caractérisation psychoacoustique à la perception de l’environnement sonore. Ph. D. Dissertation. Sorbonne Université.
[6]
M Soledad Cepeda, Daniel B Carr, Joseph Lau, and Hernando Alvarez. 2006. Music for pain relief. Cochrane database of systematic reviews2 (2006).
[7]
Sudhansu Chokroverty. 2017. Overview of normal sleep. Sleep disorders medicine: Basic science, technical considerations and clinical aspects (2017), 5–27.
[8]
Ian Crawford, Tyler Hogan, and Michael J Silverman. 2013. Effects of music therapy on perception of stress, relaxation, mood, and side effects in patients on a solid organ transplant unit: A randomized effectiveness study. The arts in psychotherapy 40, 2 (2013), 224–229.
[9]
Martha Davis, Elizabeth Robbins Eshelman, and Matthew McKay. 2008. The relaxation and stress reduction workbook. New Harbinger Publications.
[10]
William B Davis, Kate E Gfeller, and Michael H Thaut. 2008. An introduction to music therapy: Theory and practice. ERIC.
[11]
Gerrit De Niet, Bea Tiemens, Bert Lendemeijer, and Giel Hutschemaekers. 2009. Music-assisted relaxation to improve sleep quality: meta-analysis. Journal of advanced nursing 65, 7 (2009), 1356–1364.
[12]
Paul Fraisse. 1984. Perception and estimation of time. Annual review of psychology 35, 1 (1984), 1–37.
[13]
Karmen Franinovic and Stefania Serafin. 2013. Sonic interaction design. Mit Press.
[14]
E Thayer Gaston. 1951. Dynamic music factors in mood change. Music Educators Journal 37, 4 (1951), 42–44.
[15]
Tamara L Goldsby, Michael E Goldsby, Mary McWalters, and Paul J Mills. 2017. Effects of singing bowl sound meditation on mood, tension, and well-being: an observational study. Journal of evidence-based complementary & alternative medicine 22, 3 (2017), 401–406.
[16]
Malcolm Houel, Abhilash Arun, Alfred Berg, Alessandro Iop, Adrian Barahona-Rios, and Sandra Pauletto. 2020. Perception of emotions in knocking sounds: An evaluation study. In Sound and Music Computing Conference. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3898922
[17]
Daniel Hug, Karmen Franinovic, and Yon Visell. 2007. Sound Embodied: Explorations of sonic interaction design for everyday objects in a workshop setting. (2007).
[18]
Daniel Hug, Moritz Kemper, Kathleen Panitz, and Karmen Franinović. 2016. Sonic Playgrounds: Exploring Principles and Tools for Outdoor Sonic Interaction. In Proceedings of the Audio Mostly 2016. 139–146.
[19]
Makoto Iwanaga, Maki Ikeda, and Tatsuya Iwaki. 1996. The effects of repetitive exposure to music on subjective and physiological responses. Journal of Music Therapy 33, 3 (1996), 219–230.
[20]
E Jacobson. 1938. Progressive relaxation. Chicago: Univer.
[21]
Shamini Jain, Shauna L Shapiro, Summer Swanick, Scott C Roesch, Paul J Mills, Iris Bell, and Gary ER Schwartz. 2007. A randomized controlled trial of mindfulness meditation versus relaxation training: Effects on distress, positive states of mind, rumination, and distraction. Annals of behavioral medicine 33 (2007), 11–21.
[22]
Biren B Kamdar, Dale M Needham, and Nancy A Collop. 2012. Sleep deprivation in critical illness: its role in physical and psychological recovery. Journal of intensive care medicine 27, 2 (2012), 97–111.
[23]
Marisa H Loft and Linda D Cameron. 2013. Using mental imagery to deliver self-regulation techniques to improve sleep behaviors. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 46, 3 (2013), 260–272.
[24]
Vincenzo Madaghiele, Arife Dila Demir, and Sandra Pauletto. 2023. Heat-sensitive sonic textiles: fostering awareness of the energy we save by wearing warm fabrics. In 20th Sound and Music Computing Conference, SMC 2023, Hybrid, Stockholm, Sweden. 395–402. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10062975
[25]
Vincenzo Madaghiele and Sandra Pauletto. 2022. Experimenting techniques for sonic implicit interactions: a real time sonification of body-textile heat exchange with sound augmented fabrics. In Conference on the Sonification of Health and Environmental Data,(SoniHED 2022), Stockholm, Sweden. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7243805
[26]
Vincenzo Madaghiele and Sandra Pauletto. 2022. The sonic carpet: realtime feedback of energy consumption and emission data through sonic interaction design. In 27nd International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Online. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/67383
[27]
Oleg Medvedev, Daniel Shepherd, and Michael J Hautus. 2015. The restorative potential of soundscapes: A physiological investigation. Applied Acoustics 96 (2015), 20–26.
[28]
Giulio Moro, Astrid Bin, Robert H Jack, Christian Heinrichs, Andrew P McPherson, 2016. Making high-performance embedded instruments with Bela and Pure Data. (2016).
[29]
Hiroko Ochiai, Chorong Song, Hyunju Jo, Masayuki Oishi, Michiko Imai, and Yoshifumi Miyazaki. 2020. Relaxing effect induced by forest sound in patients with gambling disorder. Sustainability 12, 15 (2020), 5969.
[30]
Elif Ozcan, Yiling Liu, Jered Vroon, Daan Kamphuis, and Simone Spagnol. 2022. Doplor Sleep: Monitoring hospital soundscapes for better sleep hygiene. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Medical and Health Informatics. 69–77.
[31]
Sandra Pauletto. 2022. Foley performance and sonic implicit interactions: How Foley artists might hold the secret for the design of sonic implicit interactions. In The Body in Sound, Music and Performance. Focal Press, 265–278.
[32]
Sandra Pauletto, Adrian Barahona-Rios, Vincenzo Madaghiele, and Yann Seznec. 2023. Sonifying energy consumption using SpecSinGAN. In Sound and Music Computing Conference. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10062986
[33]
Miller S Puckette 1997. Pure data. In ICMC.
[34]
Rudolf E Radocy and J David Boyle. 2012. Psychological foundations of musical behavior. Charles C Thomas Publisher.
[35]
Samantha M Riedy, Michael G Smith, Sarah Rocha, and Mathias Basner. 2021. Noise as a sleep aid: A systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews 55 (2021), 101385.
[36]
Noriko Sakurai, Ken Ohno, Satoshi Kasai, Kazuaki Nagasaka, Hideaki Onishi, and Naoki Kodama. 2021. Induction of relaxation by autonomous sensory meridian response. Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience 15 (2021), 761621.
[37]
Rebecca Jane Scarratt, Ole Adrian Heggli, Peter Vuust, and Kira Vibe Jespersen. 2023. The audio features of sleep music: Universal and subgroup characteristics. PloS One 18, 1 (2023), e0278813.
[38]
Jun’ichiro Seyama and Ruth S Nagayama. 2007. The uncanny valley: Effect of realism on the impression of artificial human faces. Presence 16, 4 (2007), 337–351.
[39]
Yann Seznec, Sandra Pauletto, Cristian Bogdan, and Elina Eriksson. 2023. The Sound of the Future Home Workshop: Ideating Sonic Prototypes for Sustainable Energy Consumption. In Proceedings of the 18th International Audio Mostly Conference. 101–108. https://doi.org/10.1145/3616195.3616213
[40]
Injoon Song, Kwangsik Baek, Choyun Kim, and Chorong Song. 2023. Effects of nature sounds on the attention and physiological and psychological relaxation. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 86 (2023), 127987.
[41]
Sarah Steghaus and Christian H Poth. 2022. Assessing momentary relaxation using the Relaxation State Questionnaire (RSQ). Scientific Reports 12, 1 (2022), 16341.
[42]
Jingxian Sun, Jiaxun Kang, Ping Wang, and Hui Zeng. 2013. Self-relaxation training can improve sleep quality and cognitive functions in the older: A one-year randomised controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Nursing 22, 9-10 (2013), 1270–1280.
[43]
Xueli Tan, Charles J Yowler, Dennis M Super, and Richard B Fratianne. 2012. The interplay of preference, familiarity and psychophysical properties in defining relaxation music. Journal of Music Therapy 49, 2 (2012), 150–179.
[44]
Hideki Tanaka and Shuichiro Shirakawa. 2004. Sleep health, lifestyle and mental health in the Japanese elderly: ensuring sleep to promote a healthy brain and mind. Journal of psychosomatic research 56, 5 (2004), 465–477.
[45]
Wei-Chun Wang. 2014. A study of the type and characteristics of relaxing music for college students. In Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Vol. 21. AIP Publishing.
[46]
Kyoung-Su Yeo, Myung-Sook Kim, and Myung-Jin Bae. 2015. Acoustic characteristics of the forest sounds inducing sleep. International Information Institute (Tokyo). Information 18, 10 (2015), 4407.
Index Terms
- Sonic Blankets: exploring the use of sound-augmented blankets for relaxation and sleep
Recommendations
Sound design ideation: a structured and systematic analysis
AM '24: Proceedings of the 19th International Audio Mostly Conference: Explorations in Sonic CulturesRecent research identified sixteen dimensions along which sound designers make decisions when ideating and sketching sounds. These 16 dimensions can be grouped into “Overarching strategies”, “Design Strategies” and “Approaches to sound”. In this paper, ...
Evaluating a sonic interaction design based on a historic theatre sound effect
Highlights- Digital modelling of a historical theatre sound effect (acoustic wind machine).
AbstractThis paper reports on the procedure and results of a preliminary experiment to evaluate participants’ perceptual experiences of a mechanical theatre sound effect and its digital counterpart. The theatre sound effect chosen - an ...
Evaluating the Use of Sound in Static Program Comprehension
Comprehension of computer programs is daunting, due in part to clutter in the software developer's visual environment and the need for frequent visual context changes. Previous research has shown that nonspeech sound can be useful in understanding the ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
September 2024
565 pages
Copyright © 2024 Owner/Author.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 18 September 2024
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
- Research
- Refereed limited
Funding Sources
- European Union
Conference
AM '24
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 177 of 275 submissions, 64%
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 112Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)112
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)57
Reflects downloads up to 19 Dec 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
View options
View or Download as a PDF file.
PDFeReader
View online with eReader.
eReaderHTML Format
View this article in HTML Format.
HTML FormatLogin options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in