Here’s how Fitbit figured out the right animals to assign to the different sleep types according to Fitbit’s Sleep Profile

Google’s Fitbit launched Sleep Profile as a Premium feature last year. This feature provides a user with a detailed analysis of their sleep upon using the feature for at least 14 nights over a month.

The fun part about Fitbit’s Sleep Profile is the Sleep Profile animals. This feature makes use of three different creatures to represent the most common human sleeping pattern’s according to Fitbit’s data.

The Fitbit Premium Sleep Profile assigns a sleep animal assignment on the first day of each month, to describe how a user slept in the previous month.

Fitbit analyzed the sleep data of hundreds and thousands of people. They engineered about 1000 sleep features to record people’s sleeping behaviors in order to draw down certain sleep types. Upon further research, they concluded that there are different types of sleepers, about six types to be more specific.

Fitbit’s research team wanted to make use of this data to help their users develop healthier sleeping patterns and in turn good health.

They tried connecting the concluded sleep types to different entities. They finally realized that we feel connected to animals more.

The Fitbit team decided to work with ethnographers and animal experts, to figure out the right animals for each sleep type that Fitbit earlier noted. They eventually landed on the bear, the dolphin, the hedgehog, the giraffe, and the tortoise.