The Ever Snug is a bunk bed designed for a child with developmental delays and fewer means of communication. It’s the current iteration of creating a safe space, both in terms of security and limiting sensory overload. It’s unique in that it was designed for one specific person—Everett—and is an exploration in user experience design in physical products.

My Role

Stakeholder, Research, Design, Building, Testing

Project duration

Ongoing for the past 9 years. Latest iteration: 3 months

So let’s meet Everett Then

This case study is a bit unique in that it doesn’t involve building a digital product for a subset of users, but rather a physical product, a bed, for one very specific user—my son, Everett.

Everett is 9 years old and my adopted son. He was born with Down syndrome and has numerous developmental delays that affect his hearing, vision, speech, and impulse control. He has issues with his hips and feet that make walking a marathon effort for him.

And yet, he’s intensely curious and observant. He’s the first to notice if something has changed (room decor, a person’s hairstyle). He does some basic ASL signing and makes sounds, but on the whole he is considered non-verbal in his limited communication skills.

Unfortunately, his tenacious curiosity often ignores a sense of personal safety, which is part of the impetus of this project. Everett might pull a heavy object down on top of his head, fall off of a piece of furniture, or flip a light switch on and off for ten minutes, so he requires a higher level of supervision than the average child.

As the primary stakeholders were myself and my wife, our continued conversations functioned as stakeholder interviews while we clarified Everett’s needs and our goals for him as he grew from infancy into adulthood. We knew he needed a bed that served several purposes.

Primary Goals:

• It needs to be a safe place, where he can have less stimulation and be able to rest.

• It needs to be a secure place, where he can be contained and unable to inadvertently cause himself harm when unsupervised.

• It needs to be a sanitary place that can be easily cleaned when necessary. This goal was added as the project progressed over several years.

Secondary Goals:

• The bed needs to provide ample space for him as he grows.

• The bed needs to be built so that he can get in and out of it on his own ability.

• The bed needs to be viewed by Everett as his own space, his sanctuary.

Getting a response to a direct question is very difficult with a person who is developmentally delayed, even more so when that person is non-verbal. So without knowing it at first, we used a form of contextual inquiry to observe Everett in various environments, taking note of how he responded to things around him, watching where his eyes would look, and seeing what he might fixate on. We also noted his physical capabilities.

This process began when he was about 3 years old and needed to transition out of his crib.

The first prototype tested was a small, purchased, pop-up tent from a company called KidCo, placed on the floor of his room. Initially, it had enough space, plenty of ventilation, and only one zippered door. He could work his fingers in between the zippers and pull them open, so each night we would use a simple twist tie to hold the zippers shut. It was easy enough to undo in emergencies, but strong enough to withstand Everett’s curiosity and tenacity. An added bonus was that the tent was easily portable for overnight trips.

This worked well for a few months until Everett grew and the tent was too small. Still it had clarified that the tent idea worked. We just needed a larger one.

Internet research led us to a company called Privacy Pop, which specialized in bed tents ranging in size from twin to queen, designed for people with sensory overload issues. They had larger zippered openings on either side that ran the full length as well as two smaller zippered windows for ventilation. These also could be compacted down for travel and overnight stays.

We ordered a twin size tent. When it arrived, we set it up on a low twin size bed frame with a mattress placed inside. There were more openings to secure against Everett’s inquisitive nature, but on the whole, the initial reception to the new tent went quite well. Everett climbed in happily and looked around with an air of contentment. When we zipped him in for bedtime, he was quite pleased and slept well that night.

So the second prototype tested well with Everett, met the main goals, and lasted for a couple years.

A few months after turning six, at the end of January 2019, Everett became sick. What first seemed like a nasty cold led to an emergency room visit and a two week hospital stay. On February 4th, Everett was diagnosed with Leukemia and started a 3 year long chemotherapy treatment plan.

In terms of his bed as a prototype for his safe space, new needs became more pronounced:

1. Could it be easily cleaned when Everett grew nauseous from his treatments?

2. Could the zippered flap be opened quickly when Everett needed assistance?

3. Could we keep it well disinfected to protect his compromised immune system?

4. Would it still be a comfortable, safe space for him as he was experiencing tremendous discomfort on his road to recovery?

Over the next year we received answers to each of those questions:

1. Yes and no. The mattress could be easily pulled out for cleaning and to allow room to clean the tent. But cleaning around seams and zippers was very difficult.

2. Yes. If we heard that Everett was in distress, we could fully open the main flap within seconds after entering the room.

3. Yes, to a point. Lysol spray worked well when needed, but porous tent material can only be disinfected to a point.

4. Yes, thankfully it remained a sanctuary.

At one point we did have to replace the tent with a new one, albeit the same model, after the existing one became too hard to get fully clean.

Everett made it through his treatments like a champion and starting regaining his old strength. And with that, his tenacious curiosity returned.

So much more can be said about the duration of Everett’s treatment and what all happened, but that is for another time in another piece of writing.

As Everett became his old self, it became apparent that he had gotten stronger than he was pre-leukemia. He managed to start breaking the tent through his persistence and curiosity.

This happened in 2021, as the world was still wrestling with COVID19 and disrupted supply chains. The company we had purchased Everett’s tent through previously no longer had a functioning website. So instead we found an alternative company called Alvantor and purchased a similar tent through them. It differed from the Privacy Pop brand in one major difference—the side flap did not open the entire length of the mattress.

This proved to NOT meet several key needs:

• It was harder to remove the mattress for cleaning.

• Everett had a harder time climbing inside to sleep.

• It didn’t survive Everett’s rigorous testing.

After a few short months, it was already broken in several places. But in a miraculous moment, we found that the Privacy Pop brand had some select models available through Amazon. They were less durable than what we bought before, but had essentially the same features Everett needed and so served his needs again, at least temporarily.

But Everett’s strength could not be ignored any longer. I realized that the time had come for something more durable than a tent. We researched medical grade beds built specifically for people with special needs and found them to be far too expensive ($7K to $10K).

So I sat down to brainstorm, draw, and design something that I could build. 

We had part of an existing bed frame that could be re-purposed, and I had the woodworking knowledge, so we planned out a simple bunk bed that would have foldable doors on one side, drawing inspiration from a northern European concept called a “Bedstee,” in which sleeping areas are built to function like a cupboard.

The bunk bed idea also came from a consideration of the family dynamics. At some point, it is likely that Everett will need to share a room with his younger brother, and his bed needs to have a covering to keep him secure at night. A bunk bed easily fulfills both of those.

We constructed the sides of the frame with horizontal slats to ensure proper ventilation, form a ladder for the upper bunk, and add strength to the overall structure.

Before the doors were made, we temporarily placed Everett’s broken tent into the bed frame, since the zipper still worked. He was very excited about the new developments.

We also decided to rotate the bed around so that the ladder side would be towards the window. Since the doors hadn’t been made yet, this change has minimal ramifications on the design.

We built the doors with horizontal slats as well, using piano hinges to help distribute the overall weight and allow them to fold in half when opened—an overall space saver. The hope is that this will lead to fewer pinched fingers and warped frames over time. The folding aspect also means that we only have to partially open the space to allow Everett easy access, while still having the ability to easily remove the mattress for cleaning.

The tents had the convenience of zippers, but as that was not an option, we ideated and came up with a spinning cleat concept that would allow us to secure each door at the top and bottom. Though still easy to open in emergencies, they are out of Everett’s curious reach. He is fascinated by them when he is out of bed, but thus far, the concept is holding out well.

We did not want the bed to look and feel like a cage, though for all practical purposes, it does need to function that way each night, preventing Everett from roaming free. So once the bed was assembled in Everett’s bedroom, we again entered into a modified contextual inquiry to see how he would react and to effectively test the design. When he walked into his room, he immediately climbed into the Ever Snug with a huge smile and pulled the doors closed himself, content to have a new space that was just for him.

Each evening at bedtime and every morning when we wake him up, we continue to observe how he responds. One area of the design that may need to be improved in the future is the cleat system. The first iteration is working but I’ve already had to adjust and tighten several of them. So we’ll see how well they hold up over time.

As Everett gets older, if his mobility decreases, we may have to add something to raise the bottom bunk up a little so that he doesn’t have to crawl into the bed but can instead sit down more easily. But for now, this has been an ongoing experiment in observation and will continue to be so in order to keep Everett safe and snug in his bed.

The Ever Snug branding was meant to add a bit of fun to the whole project because again, we want this to be a safe space for Everett, one which he feels some ownership as he grows up. I drew custom letters with small details to mimic the pocket holes on the folding door construction and chose colors that would match his room. Making an actual sign to affix to the bed is still in the works at this point as this was created once the bed was completed.