Faculty of Design

Graphic Design

Romel Keith Agtang

Netsomnia: PhoneCrib

A bed that protects, feed, and relaxes your device.REST DEPRIVED PHONES? The future of device care is here! This smart pod can offer more than just a bedding. PhoneCrib provides the best sleep experience for your mobile phone to strengthen its health and longevity. With its high end features, guaranteed. Equipped with full force bedding comfort, this next-gen pod is also your personal docking device and the safest place for your phone. Providing great protection, while nurturing it with unprecedented power source with a build-in power bank technology.

“We often use our smartphone devices for pleasures, but ironically, we use our devices to not physically rest anymore. One solution to the issue is the present of a smart device that prevent us from using our phones at night. Imagine a world where people care more about their phones’ wellbeing than themselves. But wait, well this is already happening. One person can have an expensive casing for their phone but can’t cloak a decent clothing for themselves, for example. Essentially, PhoneCrib is a reimagined product to help with proper management of sleep. It is a mobile phone monitoring device that elevates the role of screentime apps and their downtime capability to help users conform to their intended sleeping schedules and avoid from the interference of their devices. An imaginary product concept that I believe close to being real and practically designed according to its potential and probability of actually being manufactured by present technology. ​It is basically a sarcastic reaction to our over reliance on our phones, mocking the booming sleep/meditation industry, and the fact that sleep have become a luxury that people are adamant to spend dollars in order to attain a good night sleep. Like a table-turned perspective, ironically, instead of the users as the subject of concern when it comes to sleep, it’s been replaced by their device. Since we do not seem to take our sleep seriously and focus more on the wellbeing of our phones. Instead of us worrying about our own health, we worry about our devices.​This imaginary product is being advertised as a real item, with all these next-gen product specifications and features that provides maximum experience for our phones. The concept of PhoneCrib is that it operates like a smart pod casing device that temporarily disables the main function of a smartphone. Such as, access to apps which prevents the user to browse eventually, forcing them to not use their device at bedtime hours. Done by a strict approach, the smart pod becomes a cloaking device for the phone which would then be inaccessible and locked within the crib. Only to be released after the user’s alarm settings go off the next morning. In this way, the user still has full control to these devices. They set their alarm settings and the crib honours it. It is a constant collaboration between of the user, their device, and an external device. While stuck in the crib, the phone can only be accessed by incoming and emergency calls, which leaves the phone still functional at the events of emergency situations.​In an allegorical way, the phone represents us, the user. By changing the focus from our sleep to the wellbeing of our devices, there is also an underlying message about it, that if we learn to put our phones down, then we can be rest assured to re-attain a good sleeping hygiene. It is the hidden solution I hope that viewers would realize. The overall purpose of this is to point out that our phone use is the problem and a balance relationship between our eyes and our screen is a prerequisite for a better sleep.”