Lullababies
Smart pillowSpecialization in Product and Service Design - 2020
Lullababies is a smart pillow that monitors the baby, interprets their cry and tells the parents about possible discomfort. I developed the project during my specialization in Product and Service Design, aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3: ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
The challenge and the concept
A baby’s arrival brings happiness, but also fears and plenty of doubts. One of new parents’ biggest fears is crying: it is a child’s first form of communication and is used for everything, from hunger and sleepiness to cold, heat or discomfort. The research drew on Bowlby’s attachment theory and Eurico Figueiredo’s studies, which treat crying as communication directed at the caregiver, as well as recent research using software to identify symptoms in babies’ cries. The project’s question: what if parents could better understand what a cry means?
Human-centered design
The answer was a comforting, cloud-shaped object that speaks to both baby and parents. If the cry is one of loneliness, the pillow turns pink and plays a lullaby. If it signals discomfort, it checks the room temperature, glows blue (cold) or red (hot) and alerts the parents by audio. Every detail was designed for use with babies: a soft, washable and hypoallergenic cover, siliconized fiber filling and a light that communicates without startling.
Technology and prototype
The product combines a high-sensitivity microphone, temperature, humidity and light sensors, a speaker, an RGB LED ring, Wi-Fi and a rechargeable battery. Cry analysis happens in the cloud, supported by a collaborative service: through the app, parents upload audio samples labeled by gender, the baby’s age and the reason for crying, such as hunger, colic, tiredness, loneliness, cold or heat, feeding a shared repository. To validate the concept, I created the working physical prototype, with Arduino and sensors, and presented it to the specialization’s examining board. It was a simpler prototype, but it achieved its ultimate goal: presenting the project. The result was the highest grade and the surprise of the professors, who did not expect to see the product actually working. The prototype is shown in the video.
Outcome
A product and service concept that brings together a physical object, an app and cloud data to ease new parents’ anxiety and support the baby’s well-being from the very first days. The full project presentation is available as a PDF alongside.
Services
- Research
- Product design
- Service design
- Visual identity
- Arduino prototype