Sleeping Fairy
How might simple, crafted prototypes help university students map their personal sleep disruptors and reflect on their habits?
- Role
- Researcher, facilitator and designer in a five-person team: Ella, Gorjan, Sonisa, Kaitlyn, Chloe
- Where
- Design and Mediation in Health, University of Aveiro, 2026; co-design event 6 March 2026
- Methods
- Participatory design; visual cultural probes; sticker-based dot voting on meme and fairy boards; a threadboard mapping of weekly sleep and wake times; co-written zine responses
- Outputs
- The Sleep & Recharge Lab (a sequence of five activities); a hand-bound collective zine; an orange bedside lamp concept
what was done
Students were welcomed by the team as "the sleeping fairies", given the research aim and consent information, then moved through the activities: dot-voting on humorous sleep-struggle images and on ideal habits; connecting their weekly sleep and wake times with thread so individual patterns became a collective visualisation; choosing a small freebie matched to their sleep wish; and writing about how they feel when they wake up.
what came out
The written responses were translated into a collective zine. Sonisa's pages use a cyanotype palette: a brain scan, "we could cry" and "so tired of blue light", counting sheep, and a lamp made of the participants' own words. The zine was hand-bound in bed-cover-inspired packaging, alongside a soft orange lamp concept for better sleep.
