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It's simple and beautiful, but I'm just not sure how much value it has as a web app. Pretty much, the only real information you're giving to the user is: * Sle

It's simple and beautiful, but I'm just not sure how much value it has as a web app. Pretty much, the only real information you're giving to the user is: * Sleep cycles typically last 90 minutes * The average adult human takes fourteen minutes to fall asleep Unless you add some personalization, user-specific memory, or some other value, it's not gonna be more useful than just a blog post containing the above two facts.

david_shaw 16y ago
This is useful feedback, thank you! I'd like to note that I did create this project as a weekend hobby project, not necessarily a webapp designed to sell anything. I'd tend to agree with you, though, that all the webapp really does is count backwards in increments of ninety minutes. I considered adding user-specific memory, but decided against it because it seemed more straightforward to enter the time you need to wake up the next day than to login, enter details, retrieve sleep schedule and then check wake times. Maybe an added feature for registered members could be learning what time the user needs to wake up each day, so the user would simply look at a glance and see their bedtimes for the week. Again, thanks for the feedback!
hugh3 16y ago
I'm also rather unconvinced that the 90-minute sleep cycle thing is particularly accurate for everybody. If your own sleep cycles are just ten percent off from this value, you're screwed. Also, after telling it I wanted to be up at 6am, it recommended bedtimes anywhere between 9pm and 1:30 am. Is it trying to imply that I'd be better off with four and a half hours worth of sleep than with eight hours, even though eight hours isn't a multiple of 90 minutes?
- david_shaw 16y ago
  The theory behind it is that, yes, you will wake up more refreshed with three hours of sleep than four, because if you wake up mid-cycle you will be terribly groggy (a problem I suffer from fairly often). The large range of sleep (four times) is designed to matchup with most peoples' typical length of sleep (six to ten hours). As far as differences in sleep cycles, you are totally correct. My research led me to determine that ninety minutes is generally accepted as the total length of four stages of sleep, but any variance from that will skew the results. That said, the vast majority of people (supposedly) complete the four stages of sleep in about 90 minutes.

david_shaw 16y ago

This is useful feedback, thank you! I'd like to note that I did create this project as a weekend hobby project, not necessarily a webapp designed to sell anything. I'd tend to agree with you, though, that all the webapp really does is count backwards in increments of ninety minutes. I considered adding user-specific memory, but decided against it because it seemed more straightforward to enter the time you need to wake up the next day than to login, enter details, retrieve sleep schedule and then check wake times. Maybe an added feature for registered members could be learning what time the user needs to wake up each day, so the user would simply look at a glance and see their bedtimes for the week. Again, thanks for the feedback!

hugh3 16y ago

I'm also rather unconvinced that the 90-minute sleep cycle thing is particularly accurate for everybody. If your own sleep cycles are just ten percent off from this value, you're screwed. Also, after telling it I wanted to be up at 6am, it recommended bedtimes anywhere between 9pm and 1:30 am. Is it trying to imply that I'd be better off with four and a half hours worth of sleep than with eight hours, even though eight hours isn't a multiple of 90 minutes?

david_shaw 16y ago
The theory behind it is that, yes, you will wake up more refreshed with three hours of sleep than four, because if you wake up mid-cycle you will be terribly groggy (a problem I suffer from fairly often). The large range of sleep (four times) is designed to matchup with most peoples' typical length of sleep (six to ten hours). As far as differences in sleep cycles, you are totally correct. My research led me to determine that ninety minutes is generally accepted as the total length of four stages of sleep, but any variance from that will skew the results. That said, the vast majority of people (supposedly) complete the four stages of sleep in about 90 minutes.