WORK
A Game-Changing Approach to Sleep for Athletes
Helping Rise Science, a sleep analytics startup, optimize its customer experience and scale the business
The Challenge
Redesign a holistic app and service business.
IMPACT
Rise Science added the Chicago Bulls, Miami Dolphins, and the University of West Virginia to their sleep-training roster, enhancing their performance, one good night’s sleep at a time.
With Rise, 97% of players reported sleeping 60+ minutes more per night, resulting in:
70% decrease in injury rates for the season
8% faster reaction time
5% increase in successful plays
3-5 more plays per game
The OUTCOME
A rebranded and optimized sleep training system that includes the Rise Coaching App; adaptive sleep plans tailored to a player’s chronotype, age, game schedule, and training load; a part human, part machine sleep coach that continuously supports each player, monitors progress, and gives timely feedback; in-context education that provides daily and weekly sleep insights; and supporting hardware, such as UV glasses, sleep mask, and bed sensor.
PRESS
Northwestern graduates coach athletes on... sleep habits? – Big Ten Network
Tucking in professional athletes via text – Twilio Blog
This college football team is taking their sleep game to a new level – The Huffington Post
The Rise app shows how a player is progressing against such goals as “sleep time,” “recovery,” and “sleep debt,” among others.
Athletes looking to score big on game day could hit the gym, but they’d probably be better off hitting the sheets instead, according to Rise Science, a sleep analytics startup. Harnessing the latest sleep science, Rise helps players significantly improve reaction time and decrease false starts, lapses, and injuries, among other benefits.
While attending Northwestern University, the co-founders of Rise Science created a simple sleep app and light-touch coaching service, which they prototyped on the school’s Big Ten football team with positive results. They came to IDEO to optimize their customer experience and scale the business, and joined IDEO’s Startup in Residence program.
While observing coaches and players using Rise, IDEO saw the opportunity to better integrate the digital and hardware experiences and design a more robust, intuitive, and service-heavy on-boarding experience during the first few weeks using the system, when breaking old habits and incorporating new ones are most challenging.
At the end of the residence program, Rise left IDEO with a rebranded and optimized sleep training system. Here’s how it works: Players and coaches receive a short, in-person introduction to sleep coaching by a Rise employee. Players who opt in to the service receive a sleep-training kit that includes the Rise Coaching App; adaptive sleep plans tailored to their chronotype, age, game schedule, and training load; a part-human, part-machine sleep coach that continuously supports each player, monitors progress, and gives timely feedback; in-context education that provides daily and weekly sleep insights; and products like UV glasses, sleep mask, and bed sensor. In just a week of using Rise’s full sleep program, 97 percent of players report getting 54 more restorative minutes of sleep per night.
Recently, Rise Science added the Chicago Bulls, Miami Dolphins, and the University of West Virginia to their sleep-training roster, enhancing their performance, one good night’s sleep at a time.
“Coming into IDEO, we knew our service was letting customers down. When we left, we had the blueprint for the next version of Rise. We were able to solve and optimize sleep at a much larger scale,” said Jeff Kahn, co-founder and CEO of Rise Science.
The Rise sleep coaching services seamlessly combines human and digital touchpoints.
Tailored coaching helps players co-design their sleep plans.
The Rise welcome kit for players complete with UV glasses, sleep mask, and bed sensor.
2016