[boreacrat]

I thought this was a gadget to help you wake up at the ideal time? Seems the author of the review didn't leave this much thought and didn't write about it before commenters asked for it.

I agree with the reviewers scepticism towards the usefulness of the statistics, but I am interested in buying this to make my mornings better, not analyzing my sleeping patterns.

[citricsquid]

Exactly, it read like the reviewer thought it was an alarm clock...

[sbisker]

Setting user expectation is a design problem that can't just be brushed away if there is any desire in this thing going mainstream. The user will come into the device with misconceptions - it's up to the designer to manage those misconceptions and help the user through any such "user errors" gracefully. A key teaching of service design is that often it's just as appreciated - if not moreso - to guide the user through any issues gracefully, than to not let the mistakes happen at all.

Perhaps this review was just a fluke. And yes, it's a V1 - at least as far as feedback from the real world goes. But to me, a lot of the things that surprised him (that having a partner would influence the readings negatively, for instance) also surprised me. I would be hesitant to give something like this as a gift to a "mainstream" person (a "normie", if you will) right now - just because I would worry that WakeMate's manual/interface/whatever isn't yet ready to help my friend through any misconceptions they might have.

[pdx]

If you want a software only solution, I have been using the GentleAlarm App on my Android.

It rings very, very softly (user configurable for how long), and gradually ramps up it's volume.

This achieves the exact same objective of optimal wake time. If I'm sleeping soundly, then I don't wake up until it ramps up quite a lot, but if I'm already awake or just starting to wake up, I hear it quickly.