Somnia

Inspiration

We've always been drawn to scent, how a single smell can shift your entire mood before you've had a single thought. That instinct led us to ask - what if scents could help you do/realize something that isn't normally done! That question became Somnia.

What it does

Somnia is a smart or a magic candle that senses your body while you sleep, like, breath rate, micro-movements, and releases personalized scents during the critical window between sleep and waking. It tracks your patterns through a hologram interface above the flame, visualized as a growing tree where every flower is a story. No app. No setup. You just light it.

How we built it

We started with a lot of research like sleep inertia biology, Reddit threads, digital ethnography. From there we mapped the concept on FigJam, generated visual references through ChatGPT, built out the aesthetic in Canva, and prototyped the interactions in Figma Make.

Challenges we ran into

Time. We pivoted the concept a full day before the deadline, which meant rebuilding the presentation, the prototype, and the narrative almost from scratch. Fitting a speculative hardware product into a Figma prototype also pushed us to think creatively about what to show and what to imply.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We finished. On time. With a pivot. That alone felt like a win.

What we learned

How much we underestimate waking up. We assumed mornings were a motivation problem.

What's next for Somnia

A more refined UI, smoother interactions in the hologram interface, and deeper personalization in the scent logic.

Built With

• canva
• chatgpt
• claude
• figma
• figmamake
• imovies