Blog - Dream App

Article: "App Aims To Design Your Dreams, But Can't Wake Up" - found at Fast Company

There really is, apparently, an app for everything, even if it doesn't work properly. Lucid dreams are hard to have on a normal basis, but the makers of the app Dream:ON aim to get all their app owners to have them all the time. Liam Houghton, the product designer of the application, explains what the app does: “It can tell when someone is dreaming by looking for REM sleep which has a characteristic movement that we can detect most of the time,” Basically, once you enter REM, the soundscape plays audio related to the genre (space shuttle sounds for the space shuttle soundscape, etc.) and users subconsciously will use that as a cue to be at that place in their dream.

However, the app doesn't really work. While the soundscapes do essentially put the mood for the setting they're aiming for, the cues don't really line up with REM sleep, and therefore the app misses its target and most users have complained that the soundscape doesn't actually turn on. On top of this, the writer of the article (Mark Wilson) tried the alarm function of the application, which is meant to go off in relation to sleep cycles, and it just ended up going off when he set it to go off.

The thing is, this app has real potential. If they can actually get it to work in later stages, they could get a lot of money off people who had PTSD and nightmares, as when you dream lucidly you have a certain level of conscious control over what you're seeing, and they could actually sleep through the night. Not to mention, all those like me who enjoy being able to control dreams and remember them will have a blast sleeping. If they actually get it to work, I will totally buy it.