Sally talks sleep on BBC 3
Our Human Centred Design Assistant Researcher, Dr Sally Cloke, was recently interviewed on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking about her research into sleep, design and justice.
Sally was part of a panel with other academics discussing various aspects of sleep, including sleep in fiction and politics, and the history of the alarm clock.
“I talked about the boom in new sleep devices such as sleep trackers, sleep headphones and ‘smart’ bedding,” said Sally, PDR’s Human Centred Design Assistant Researcher. “While these products are targeted at improving the individual’s sleep experience, the factors that really affect how well we sleep are broader environmental and economic – urban noise, inadequate housing, precarious employment, the 24/7 economy. These need addressing on a social and political level, not with new and better gadgets.”
Sally continued: “I was also able to share my passion for speculative and critical design and discuss its potential role in raising people’s awareness of how good sleep has become a consumer good. It’s not so much that we’re losing sleep: capitalism is stealing it – then selling it back to us.”
The program will air on Radio 3 on March 13 at 10pm and will be available soon after on the BBC website
and also as an episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast.
To learn more about our research work at PDR, click here
