Better sleep has nothing to do with your bedtime routine
Creating my first app from scratch in two weeks.
During the UX bootcamp at Ironhack, we had the opportunity to collaborate with a data analytics cohort who presented their findings on the importance of sleep for overall health and well-being.
Together, we wanted to find the main factor behind poor sleep quality and help users to improve it.
The data interpretations from their AI model revealed that, without a doubt, the number of hours of deep sleep is key.
Now, it was our job to come up with an app in 2 weeks that offers a solution to this issue.
Research
Despite the quantity of sleep-related apps that are out there, 70,8% of people who answered our survey stated that they don’t get enough sleep.
When asked why, the 3 answers that came up the most were:
That leads us to believe that the apps on the market are not benefiting a significant number of users.
When asked about their morning and bedtime routine we found that:
Interviews
After gathering all the quantitative data from the data analytics cohort and our own survey, it was time to dive deeper into the problem.
We interviewed 10 people, who reported interest in improving their sleep quality, to understand the nuances of the problem in more detail.
As always, talking to potential users was really insightful. Here are some of the takeaways:
- A good night of sleep, for most interviewees, consists of getting to sleep fast and throughout the whole night.
- Stress and mental health issues are the main factors impacting negatively their sleep quality.
- Most users tried using an app to improve their sleep but gave up since it felt like too much effort.
- They know methods and techniques to improve it but often don’t do it.
- Interviewees felt unmotivated to implement new habits or change existing ones at bedtime.
Watching TV shows and using social media before bed are part of most interviewees’ routines. These habits were mentioned as important leisure time they lack during the day.
So, how can we improve users’ sleep quality without targeting bedtime specifically?
Start small
Based on our research, it was clear that a successful solution had to blend seamlessly into the user’s current routine.
Apps often feel like just one more chore and, at the end of the day after dealing with all their responsibilities, that’s not what they need.
With that in mind, we created an app that helps you to practice mindfulness while you get your stuff done.
Pebble
After many ideation sessions with different techniques we built your concept: match your daily tasks with a mindfulness audio guide.
Same routine, a different mindset: by reducing stress levels throughout the day, we target the main factor that impacts negatively sleep quality.
No manual tracking, no interruptions on your routine. This means less motivation is required to implement and keep this new habit.
Pebble tracks the user activity on the app and creates an encouraging dashboard that doesn’t require user input. Its objective is to highlight positive behavior patterns that can help users to build a more mindful routine with minimal effort.
We aimed to do that by providing comprehensive data visualization on how they are using the app, such as:
- What time of day do they usually do their mindfulness sessions
- The type of audio guide they listen to the most
Short, peaceful moments can not only change your whole day but also your night.
Prototyping
From sketches to mid-fi and all the way through hi-fi, we tested and iterated every step of the way. The changes in the design after each stage, demonstrate how much we learned throughout the project.
At first, we spent a lot of time perfecting onboarding screens.
But quickly we realized that elaborating an onboarding process so early on, wouldn’t push us towards a more intuitive design.
Considering our tight deadline, we focused on creating only the absolutely essential screens for our MVP.
Style
Inspired by minimal, calm design trends, our mood board was inspired by little pebbles creating ripple effects in water.
The way something so small propagates in such an effortless and mesmerizing way was the biggest inspiration for our design.
With the lavender color and the rounded font for the headers, we aimed to keep a welcoming and calming feel.
What I’ve learned
Since Pebble was my first ever mobile app created from scratch, I certainly learned a lot from this experience!
Next time, I would not spend time creating an onboarding right away. Even though it helped us to have a deeper understanding of our product, it can lead to poor design decisions that are not intuitive.
I consider that one of our strengths was listing the project deliverables and roadmap right away. That helped us to adapt while keeping focused.
We finished and presented our MVP feeling proud of all we accomplished and that is always what I aim for in all my projects.
I’m enjoying this journey into UX Design so much and definitely feel excited to know what I would do differently when I check on this case study a year from now!
