Apple announced its 2021 Apple Design Award finalists this morning. The announcement comes a week before the WWDC. The design awards are awarded under 6 categories: Inclusivity, Delight and Fun, Interaction, Social impact, Visuals and Graphics, and Innovation.
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Loona app from Loona Inc was selected for the Visuals and Graphics category.
The app is designed for iPad and iPhone provides stories and sounds that help users fall asleep quickly. It is also available for Mac users. The app allows users to quickly disconnect from a long stressful day and get in the right mood for sleep.
It is known from research that daytime emotional stress affects sleep by influencing sleep physiology, dream patterns, dream content, and the emotion within a dream. Other effects found are the exaggeration of the startle response, decrease in dream recall and elevation of awakening thresholds from rapid eye movement (REM), REM-sleep, increased or decreased latency to REM-sleep, and REM-sleep duration.
The way we cope with emotional stress or regulate emotion may modulate the effects of emotional stress on sleep.
Sleep deprivation affects emotional processing during the day, so you end up in a vicious cycle that can harm your overall health.
This is where Loona comes in handy!
Loona is predominantly a mood-altering app that helps users stay calmer during the day and prepares them emotionally for a relaxing sleep in the evening. During a busy day, most of us accumulate some negative emotions to keep us up during the night. If you feel angry, anxious, or depressed, it can affect your sleep rhythms.
The Loona app provides users with immersive stories and playlists via powerful visuals and graphics. The app offers users a guided session designed to calm their nerves and put them at ease using their proprietary “Sleepscapes.” These Looma designed sleepscapes are gorgeous, imaginative, and relaxing.
These guided sessions combine activity-based relaxation, storytelling, and sound to create the perfect mood for sleep. The app integrates with Apple Health and saves the sessions in the health app.
With a 4.5 rating based on more than eight thousand user reviews, the Loona app is definitely worth checking out if you have a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep.
You can check out the other 2021 design award winners by visiting Apple’s announcement page.