interaction design. video production. concept development. download my resume.

Share-A-Dream Application

Treating dream sharing as an outlet for organic storytelling, the Share-A-Dream app allows users to contribute stories and experiences to a conversation that everyone despite race, gender, age, class, orientation, or religion can take part in. Dream sharing has been a large part of many cultures such as the Hopi, Senoi, and Ramurai, in aspects such as education, daily routine, or communicative exercise. It is a delicate and personal form of communication used in group therapy sessions or specific dream sharing sessions.

The Share-A-Dream app is an anonymous sharing collective. Users have the option to share information according to their comfort level. Users are given the option to share via text, audio, or video depending on their preference and tag that entry with the emotion they felt upon waking. Users are asked to share a dream to unlock the explore function. Users may only explore other dreams if they share a dream. Turning the dream outward anonymously using these features makes this app a more comfortable and anonymous form of communication and outlet for human connection.

Demo: How to Share A Dream

Discover how to share dreamstories. Watch the demo:

Demo: How to Explore Dreams

Discover how to explore dreamstories. Watch the demo:

Some initial ideas....

I knew I wanted to research dreaming for my capstone from the start. I had no idea what to begin with however. My initial attraction to the idea was simply “everyone dreams”, even though about 11% of us don’t actually remember our dreams (don’t quote me on that number). So I took this universal, deeply human, and deeply personal idea of dreams and initially thought about devising a social network for people to share their dreams. A few weeks into research on that idea, and I was already in over my head. In fact to properly research and design such a behemoth I would need couple years, and capstone is nary but a three-quarter long assignment (4 if you’re thinking ahead).

I quickly got off track from my initial idea and sought to research interpretation of dreams, since everyone seems to want know what their dreams mean. I quickly found that there are many schools of thought when it comes to dream interpretation and it’s difficult to advocate just one. So, at the end of that first quarter of research I decided to focus on the most prevalent theories, those of Carl Jung. So I storyboarded an animation based on the research I had done, even including and somewhat dissecting a dream a volunteer had shared with me. After analyzing final result: a 2-minute long animatic that bored me to tears, I quickly released I was back to square one.

A Christmas Miracle...

Christmas occurred between Fall and Spring quarters and I received an iPod Touch as a present from my aunt. It was my first Apple product equipt with apps and I went hog wild exploring the App Store over the break. By the time the final quarter of school reared it’s ugly head I had finally been inspired with idea that reconciled my previous ideas with the pressing time constraints.

I stripped down my “social network of dreams” idea to simply an app that allowed people to share dreams as anonymously as they chose, at whim, organically, as we do in everyday conversation. I struggled with a name for a while until I remembered a phrase I once heard sophomore year of college: Keep It Simple Stupid. So I decided to call my app Share-A-Dream. The runner up being, the anglar fish inspired "Dream Monster" an improvement on the brief "Dream Machine" website idea.

Got Started With Some Wireframes....