# Designing a sleep aid for rail commuters, please help me



## pillow (Oct 18, 2007)

Hello everyone,

I am a product design student in university. I am designing a product for my final year project, to help commuters to sleep on train.

The product is multi-functional. Currently, I am not sure how exactly the product will look like, but it will be very small and portable, and powered by normal batteries. So rail commuters can carry it in their bags

It will include:

A timer to wake you up at your station,

An anti-theft function to watch your bag,

And some other functions.

All alarm and reminder will be vibration of the product.

So here I need your experience and views on the “some other functions”. Below, I listed several questions, please answer them by Yes, No or Doesn’t matter. It will be a great help for me, thank you very much!

1. Are you a rail commuter? No matter you are or not, your views will be equally important for me.

2.Do you worry about putting your head on the next passenger’s shoulder, when you fall in sleep on a train?

If yes, would you like a remainder to wake you up, when you are moving towards other passengers by vibration?

3. Do you want a cushion to support your head, if there is no such feature on the train seats?

4. Do you worry about snoring on train, if you snore in sleep? (Sorry about the mean assumption)

If yes, would you like a remainder to wake you up, when you are starting snoring?

5. Do you want other people to see your face, when you are sleeping on train?

6. Do you want to reduce the noise level, when you sleep on train?

Thank you very much again for your help.

If you are interested on this project, and have some more things want to talk to me, please email me at [email protected]


----------



## AmtrakCrescent20 (Oct 26, 2007)

Though I don't commute by rail, I'll post since no "genuine" rail commuters have responded.

1) no

2) yes

2a) yes

3) yes

4) no

5) doesn't matter

6) yes


----------



## AmtrakWPK (Oct 28, 2007)

I think you need to ride some trains that are used by commuters. I would suggest taking a SPL (sound pressure level) meter with you to give you an idea of typical ambient noise levels - that will help you in designing your appliance. Something that measures g-forces or vibration levels would probably be appropriate also, as it will help you decide what level of wake-up alarm will be necessary. I expect that if you ride a few trains you will discover that things like the onboard public-address loudspeaker system sound levels, and overall smoothness/roughness of the ride can vary enormously from car to car or train system to train system as well. At least they seem to on this side of the pond. You may need to have widely varying levels of alarm magnitude available on a switch-selectable basis. Good luck with it.


----------



## JL (Nov 2, 2007)

I'd think hygiene is the main issue on trains - something to keep me clean and off germ filled surfaces. Not that Amtrak is dirty, try riding some long-haul Ukrainian trains for instance to get a real feel for the issue.


----------



## VentureForth (Nov 30, 2007)

1. No. Used to be in High School.

2. Yes. No. I'd like to prevent it if at all possible.

3. Even if there was such a device on the train, I'd prefer my own cushy cushion.

4. I've told my next seat neighbor to jab me if I snored too loud. She said Don't Worry. She would. She didn't. Phew. If I had a reminder every time I started snoring, I'd never get any sleep.

5. I don't care if they do or don't.

6. Yes - an active noise reduction tuned to the variances of track noise and ambient noise would be terrific.


----------

