Inspiration
Oftentimes, after a nap, you find yourself waking up groggier than you were when you began, or otherwise unimproved. However, naps of the right lengths are shown to improve certain mental functions (without grogginess), and having taken a 90-minute nap myself in the middle of the hackathon, and woken up much improved, I decided that it was time someone built a website integrating information about different kinds of naps and their functions (along with an alarm)!
What it does
Nap sweetly shows what kind of naps correlate to which mental functions (enhanced creativity, alertness, quick boost, memory, etc), and how a relevant kind of nap (e.g. NASA nap, power nap, full sleep-cycle) affects your body. For example, a 90-minute nap is effective in enhancing creativity and countering sleep-deprivation because it takes you through one whole sleep cycle, making up for lost sleep from the night before, unlike shorter naps which wake you up before you have the chance to enter slow wave sleep.
If a user decides to nap there and then, having chosen to take, e.g. the NASA nap, they can simply click on the NASA Nap and an alarm (with time-elapsed displayed) will be set to wake the user up in exactly 26-minutes with a soothing alarm sound (with birds and shiz).
How I built it
I actually built this at Cal Hacks 2.0 but forgot to submit it to DevPost! I learned web dev languages, templates, libraries, and frameworks, for the first time and how they relate (javascript, css, html5, jquery, node.js, ejs, express) and after skimming many tutorials and some installation and experimentation, got nap sweetly up and running!
Challenges I ran into
Simply understanding how all these different languages, frameworks, templates, etc interacted and meant was a struggle.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Creating my first web project!
What I learned
More about MVC (Model View Controller) and how web design works. It is very different from programming a program in one language that performs one function, given some input.
What's next for nap sweetly
More research regarding brain functions, napping, and sleeping will be incorporated into the site (with sources and footnotes for additional reading if the napper would like to peruse the studies nap sweetly's information comes from).
The design will be improved, more kinds of naps added, and the brain functions streamlined for better descriptions.
I am considering adding user ratings for the effectiveness of a nap, an about page describing the importance of napping and general napping tips (e.g. napping 1-3pm is the most natural for the body, a quick cup of coffee before a power nap helps you wake up incredibly alert because coffee takes 15-20 minutes to metabolize, etc). Perhaps there will be a page about what kinds of naps to avoid (e.g. 30 minute naps wake you up right as you are entering deep sleep, often leading to a period of grogginess).
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