Sweet Sleep — helping you fall asleep | Interaction Design Capstone Project

A mobile app prototype designed for the final course of the Interaction Design Specialization offered by the UCS Design Lab via Coursera.

I began the Interaction Design Specialization in January 2016 to learn about Interaction Design and develop a solid design skillset. This specialiation had been suggested to me by someone teaching in the field. It’s been a great learning experience with lots hands-on iterations, R programmming analysis and peer reviews allowing me to learn from many others in the specialization.

Design Brief

The capstone project was launched with a design brief that presented three options to choose from; time, change and glance. As my mission, I chose to “design an interface that facilitates personal or social behavior change” intersecting with “redesigning the way we experience or interact with time”.

Needfinding

The observations derived from the interviews were related to the design brief topic. The interview goal was to gain insight into how people get to sleep. The questions spoke to the rituals, sleep aids and the challenges people encounter getting to sleep. The interviews created a space to explore the ways in which people fall asleep, what assists them in getting to sleep and what pains & joys they experience as well as other thoughts around this daily important activity.

Images related to needfinding interviews

Ideation

The ideation goal was to brainstorm opportunities for design innovation based on insights from the needfinding exercise on how people get to sleep. A point of view was distilled to express the problem/opportunity design space. Finally an inspiration board was created to capture different perspectives, identify inspiration areas and examine the existing landscape.

Brainstorm: User Goals

The following user goals are highlights from the exercise:

• An individual with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) needs a way to produce/enhance positive imaging while going to sleep.
• The user needs to find a way to get her body into a state of deep relaxation before falling asleep.
• The user needs to easily play music he finds relaxing to create a state of mental and physical relaxation to enable him to fall asleep, or if awoken to get back to sleep.
• The person needs to recreate the feeling of being in the company of friends or family to enhance his ability to fall asleep.
• The individual needs to create a soundscape that signals a sense that all is well and that one can now safely fall asleep.
• The person needs to enhance to support a gratitude ritual that allows her to have a deep peaceful sleep.

Point of View

Peacefully and gently falling asleep can occur in a delightfully short period of time yet is a richly satisfying experience we all seek. A good sleep makes all the difference in our ability to function.

For people to easily fall asleep, they need to feel at ease, peaceful and emotionally connected. Their physical and spiritual being needs to feel comforted allowing a positive drift into a contented sleep.

Inspiration board

The following titles were sources of inspiration:

• Circadian rhythm (myCircadianClock smartphone app)
• Sleep Genius App
• Guided Imagery Meditation — many types are available
• Guided Prayer — apps are available for many faiths and worldviews
• Chanting and Humming — Chanting is a commonly used spiritual practice. Like prayer, chant may be a component of a personal or group practice
• Teddy Bears — It would appear that many adults sleep or have teddy bears in their daily lives. There is an assumption of comfort, safety and familiarity exemplified by teddy bears in some cultures.
• Look and Feel—I wanted a sparse yet whimsical look to the app

Prototypes

Storyboard #1

Paper prototype A — sequences 3 & 4

Design Heuristics

This assignment was a superb learning experience as both in-person and online sessions were used to evaluate our prototypes using Jakob Nielsen’s “How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation” and “Ten Usability Heuristics”.

Many major and minor issues were identified in the evaluation process. The following are ideas from the in-person walkthrough feedback:

• Need to hear sounds before choosing them
• Add Resource option could support radio station or other online resource
• Allow user to create a playlist from favourites or build it on the fly
• App can be used for naps or to get back to sleep at night
• Flush out idea of user picking a bedtime pal instead of the teddy bear

Heuristic Evaluation Process
Very useful to find and evaluate the types of issues encountered. Helps to look at prototype from a variety of angles that one personally wouldn’t think of.

A Plan & a Skeleton

This is the next sequence in the iteration stages and we created a development plan to capture the rest fo the capstone project.

List of Changes

My first prototype was made with hand-drawn sketches and the Pop app to complete the Heuristics assignment. The Home screen was designed in the stand-alone Pencil app to complete the following assignments.

Three prototype screens

Brief Revisit Summary

The desire is to create a restful aural space to encourage participants to relax and free their minds as they get ready to go to sleep. The goal is to make the experience of falling asleep a peaceful and gentle satisfying practice. To support this change, the sleep seeker can use the Sweet Sleep app to program and play sounds to gently lull them to sleep. The app also supports nap modes or the option of replaying sounds should one awake in the night. Choices such of natural sounds, lullabies, quiet conversations to mimic company, a favorite prayer, a cat purring, humming or chanting with the app, or adding new sound channels give the participants many options.

Ready for Testing

At the next step of the iteration stage, I moved over to the Mockups online platform to include an interactive mode connecting the prototype screens. Further refinements are made to the app and many questions surface as my capacity to discern problems and issues increases. Wish I had more time to dedicate to refining and maybe even starting all over again!!

Proposed testing task description
For an application to lull people to sleep with sweet sounds: Sign into their account and add a sound and set up a daily schedule to play it. Also add new sound as a Favourite. Check sound settings and adjust.

Test Your Prototype

Testing Protocol
For the next set of iterations, I designed a testing protocol and adapted consetn forms for our in-person testers. I introduced the mobile app project as part of the Interaction Design certification and explained that I would be asking them to complete a few tasks in the app. I woudl also be recording an audio track and taking photos over their shoulders as they went through the tasks. They were free to explore the prototype and share comments.

Tester going through the tasks

The testers found many issues. It was a valuable experience to let people use the prototype’s existing functionality to discover the app. Most surprising was the differences between the testers’ feedback. A greater sample of testers would have revealed an ever greater differences and as similarities as the resulst started to converge. From the feedback I made changes and prepared two versions of the app for A/B testing using the UserTesting.com platform.

Modification for A/B testing

Results!

Online Test Results

A good dash of humility to have complete strangers with whom I had no opportunity to communicate! Watching and listening to the screen capture video/audio of the testing sessions was invaluable. Here are their comments:

Version 4: hyan026’s answers

• Looks like a very nice and cute app. Not sure how it would compare to current apps that does the same thing

Version 4: coreychan’s answers

• Overall the app was very clean, simple and easy to use. The app design could be improved, the design and colours seemed a bit too basic and a little more attention to graphics would help. I’m curious why I need to create an account to use an alarm clock? That might be something I would be hesitant to do because I don’t prefer to give out my e-mail address.

Version 3: jenniferdm’s answers

• I love the simplicity of the app. Don’t change that! Just update/modernize it.

Version 3: Megan H.’s answers

• Needs a lot of work compared to similar apps already available. Please fix back arrow navigation issues. Top right x button should clearly be a log out button.

My comments

• As a first time doing this activity there was gaps in the instructions I provided
• All but one user thought the app was a wake up alarm even if instructions described its purpose otherwise (major issue!)
• In that light it’s understandable why creating an account makes little sense
• The lack of functionality in my prototype was frustrating for the testers
• The site used to make my prototype was slow to respond to testing interface
• Incredibly helpful to do this assignment and I have tons to learn
• Worth signing up as a tester to learn

Conclusion

The Interaction Design Specialization courses have been a great learning experience though not without its trials and tribulations! I took this on while working and doing a master’s degree full-time (what was I thinking?!). Actually the cross-pollination of the specialization with the Masters of Inclusive Design for Digital at OCAD U has been a blessing as both have contributed to my learning. This accomplishment is a first step to what I hope will be a fruitfull and collaborative future. To my fellow travellers, thanks !!