7A Testing my Hypothesis

Environmentally friendly sleep aid

Many individuals use sound machines to play the sounds of rain or waves in order to help them sleep at night, even in Florida, when during the summer those sounds can occur naturally so this uses up an unneeded amount of electricity.

• The who: people in rainy areas who need a sound machine to sleep
• The what: use unnecessary electricity
• The why: playing recorded sounds of waves/rain and playing it through speakers all night in order to have a relaxing enough environment to sleep

Testing the who: According to the National Sleep Foundation, approximately 5% of the American population alone use a sound-conditioner to sleep, which runs all night long filling the room with white noise. This means that in America alone there are 16,285,000 people that would need sounds like rain to sleep. Many of these individuals would be in rainy areas and therefore would not need to artificially produce the noise and may be able to benefit from a more environmentally friendly way to produce these sounds that could just amplify the natural sounds of rain. However, this doesn't even begin to include people who just enjoy hearing the sounds of rain without needing it to sleep who may also want the sounds of rain to be amplified. So there is a relatively big prototypical market for this opportunity.

Testing the what: Many people using these sleep-conditioners are not only subject to high electricity bills from using an electronically powered machine every night for at least 6 hours a day, but some may also care about the environment and want a more natural way to obtain these noises. Being environmentally conscious has been a huge trend in society lately so many people may want this opportunity. Some of these sleep noise options may not be natural enough sounding so someone may prefer the sound of the natural rain, but the noise of rain against the roof is simply too quiet to help at night. While the boundaries of this need may seem small since not many people use a sleep aid, many people do just enjoy the noise of rain and may want natural ways to amplify the sound.

Testing the why: For the people that need white noise to sleep, there is currently only one option and that is a sound-conditioner so they have no choice but to use this extra electricity because many cannot sleep without these noises playing in some capacity. The need for a relaxing environment for sleep is what causes these problems.

Interview #1:

A fifteen year old teenager told me that her entire family needs the sound of white noise in order to sleep at night so on any given night, they have five sound machines going at once. She was concerned about how that might not be environmentally friendly, but said that the sound of rain at night is not loud enough at her house to help even when it does rain so the sound machine is still needed. She said her family is normally very environmentally conscious and tries to conserve as much electricity as possible, turning lights out when not in use etc. but that her family makes an exception when it comes to playing white noise at night in all bedrooms.

Interview #2:

I conducted this interview with a fifty year old father who has two daughters that need sound machines to sleep at night. He said he was not concerned so much about the environment as he was about the price of the electricity bill and the cost of needing iPods and speakers in each room. But he also said it was worth the investment if it meant not having his kids up until late hours of the night as a result of not being able to sleep, especially if his kids interrupt his own sleep when they are unable to sleep themselves since his kids are young. He said he saw sleep machines as the only solution to a child unable to sleep at night because every other sleep aid did not work for his kids and giving a sleeping pill to a young child is not a viable solution.

Interview #3:

For this interview, I talked with a college student who loves the rain but apparently does not play any sounds while sleeping. She told me that she loves the sound of rain, but has only thought to play rain noises to lull her to sleep one time when she was having an unordinary level of difficulty sleeping. She said she typically needs a very quiet room to sleep. She also said that part of the reason she loves when it rains is the sound of the rain faintly hitting the roof as a quiet background noise and not a noise that fills the room like a white noise machine would.

Interview #4:

I spoke with a Sustainability Studies major from the University of Florida who is very environmentally conscious and likes to use environmentally friendly products. He said using too much energy is bad for the environment and can lead to global warming. He felt very strongly that having individuals use electricity overnight, especially to have it being consumed when a user is in deep sleep and cannot even consciously process the effects of using that energy is just wasteful. He said the trend of going green and protecting the environment against phenomena like global warming is up to us as individuals and that we should all look to choose more green products, which thankfully a large number of individuals are beginning to realize. He went on to say that environmentally aware individuals are especially emerging from the Millennial generation and that this generation would definitely be receptive to natural, environmentally conscious products as a whole.

Interview #5:

This interview was done with a thirty year old who recently moved to Los Angeles who uses a noise machine at night to play white noise. She claims that she needs the noise to drown out the sounds of the city since she isn't used to those noises yet since the move was so recent. She thinks that overtime she will adjust to the city noise and not need a sound machine, but that for now it helps her feel like she is back in her hometown to hear the noise of rain. She is not very environmentally conscious, but did say that with rent being so high in LA the cost of the electricity necessary for the machine is something she was concerned about. She did view the sound machine as something temporary though and did not see herself needing it for very long so she was willing to have a higher bill if it helped in her transition to the new city.

Summary

These interviews definitely helped me to see this opportunity in a new light and gave me better insight into this opportunity. I originally thought that those who just simply love rain, but don't necessarily need a sleep machine, may still be interested in a product that amplifies the rain sound, but it turns out some people find the quiet aspect of the rain hitting the roof to be the best part and wouldn't want it amplified, which may limit my market. Also, I thought more people would be environmentally conscious and have that as their main concern, but many people ended up being more concerned with the money aspect of having a high electricity bill so my product would have to be cost conscious. From interview four, you can tell that there is still a big market for environmentally conscious individuals though. However, I had not considered that people who use a sound maker may be using it as a temporary solution as in interview five. This would limit the market for my product because those people may just fade out the sound machine instead of investing in a different product that would be for environmental purposes since they've already invested in the noise maker.