Goodnight

Goodnight is an exciting new application which aims to help people put to good sleep. With the modern era and its advances, people have stressed themselves to an extent that they find it hard to sleep. This application targets that very audience. It helps you keep a track of your sleep, dietary habits and caffeine/alcohol intake.

Further, it also suggests optimizing your sleep environment, such as maintaining ambient light and temperature settings for better sleep and helps people to keep a good tab on their day-time naps. The application also suggests healing techniques such as meditation music, sleep stories, and nature melodies. The application is also supported on Apple Watch and FitBit.

Discovering

With the modern era and its technical advances, day to day life has become more stressful for the masses. It is very imperative to take care of one’s mental well-being along with physical health. The market currently lacks a comprehensive sleep monitoring application which also suggests better sleep techniques and help people fight insomnia together.

Solutioning

Our application is based off a broad user research study, which suggests that people desperately need a good sleep monitoring solution which can keep a tab on people’s daily dietary intakes, monitor their sleep cycles and track their vitals. The application further puts together better sleep patterns by suggesting the optimum temperature, noise and lighting.

UX Research

Key Assumptions & Considerations

With the help of online surveys, questionnaires, and interviews with people across different demographics, a few key assumptions and constraints were noted:

01

More than 50% of the users were not sleeping well because of their high alcohol and caffeine intake. Hence, we came up with a solution to help users track their alcohol intake and its direct impact on their sleep patterns.

02

With the user research surveys, it was evident that healing music and meditation before going to bed can help people sleep better.

03

It was also noted that people with more than 72F tempeature and bright lighting have trouble sleeping. Hence this application also lets people keep a track of their room’s lighting and temperature.

04

Further, with the user interviews, it was clear that people who eat just before going to bed usually have a worse sleep than the ones who take their meals on time. As a result, they have to take a few daytime naps which further impacts their sleep cycle.

User Personas

To understand the user needs and expectations in detail, various user personas were delineated. I am showing two of them below.

Kristyn is a software engineer. She has very busy daily schedule because of which she feels tired and lethargic.

Kristyn Grunick

Age: 26 years

Occupation: Engineer

Constraints

Kristyn feels frustrated because of her sleep disorder and feels highly depressed. She thinks that she needs to consult a psychiatrist to improve her mental issues. She prefers to stay alone and avoid talking to anyone.

Issues

Kristyn feels that there is no application which can provide all-in-one sleep disorder solution. She thinks that she needs to download multiple applications for each feature because of which she ends up not using anyone of them.

01

Samuel is retired veteran. He stays at home and feels solitude as a result he has sleep orders.

Samuel feels solitude as he lives alone at home and has no work to do. He miss his old working days where he used to connect with various people daily. He feels depressed and consume alcohol, nicotine all day.

Samuel Brett

Age: 60 years

Occupation: Retired

Samuel doesn’t know much about such applications which can help to improve sleep issues by listening to healing music, sleep stories and meditation. He is not technically aware about the dietary plans which can help him to cut down his alcohol & nicotine consumption.

Constraints

Issues

02

Guiding Principles

Meet the user needs

User needs were noted down to understand their problems and concerns so that to provide better user experience.

Feedback matters

Considering feedbacks from different demographics were kept in mind as it helps to make iterations and valuable product

Keep Consistency

Consistency with other applications were maintained so that user adapt it easily and feels familiar with the process

Understand Accessibility

Application accessibility was given higher weightage so that people of different demographics can use it comfortably

Clear hierarchy

A clear hierarchy was delineated to know exact user flow and how a user will navigate through the application.

Usability First

Application usability was considered more than UI design part which makes product a good user experience application

Information Architecture

To understand the user needs and expectations in detail, various user personas were delineated. I am showing two of them below.

Design System

The primary purpose of the application is to put people to a better sleep, With a comprehensive user research surveys and interviews, this font was selected as it was soothing to the eyes and didn’t put a lot of constraint on the users. As for the color palette, I have used primary and secondary colors so that content is easily visible on dark theme and user doesn’t have to put stress on eyes while naivgating through the application.

Typography

Poppins - Light

Poppins - Regular

Poppins - Medium

Poppins - SemiBold

Poppins - Bold

Colors

Primary Colors

#FFFFFF

#98A0A8

#D256F1

#13141C

Secondary Colors

#76EAB9

#246BFD

Wireframes - Low Fidelity

After all the user research, an affinity diagram was created to understand the application needs and requirements. While creating affinity diagram, the important features were prioritized and created as four navigation tabs on the basis of which whole application works. In each tab, the user requirements were listed and assigned to understand the user flow.

Once the user flow was created, rough sketches were created (low fidelity wireframes). Users feedback were taken on regular basis and many iterations were made which helped to improve the product user experience and interface. After finalizing the flow, high fidelity wireframes were designed to understand the application flow in-depth.

Wireframes were linked or prototyped to understand application UX flow. Once the flow was finalized, then final UI design was initiated which includes choosing right color & style guides, theme and UI styling. Many iterations were made based on users feedback.

Wireframes - High Fidelity

UI Design

A Goodnight application which can help users to track sleep cycle, monitor what’s on, listen to healing music, sleep stories, meditation, view action cards and follow or invite buddy for help.

When a user clicks on sleep cycle card view, a user will be able to see detail screen of statistics where he can view sleep trends & patterns, monitor heart rate, dietary and other features.

A user can view what is the current room temperature and its status. A user can also view room lighting. The settings can be changed by clicking on both the card views.

A user can listen to healing music, breathing exercises, nature melodies, sleep stories and meditation before going to bed.

A user can view all the action cards such as join upcoming event or talk to buddy for help.

A user can follow buddy for any help. A user can also invite buddy from own contact list and chat with them which will help them to relax and share their thoughts with each other.

User Testing

Multiple testings were performed to understand the user behavior towards the product like A/B testing, functional & UI testing.

Were you able to track your sleep?

Findings

~ 50% of the customers responded saying can track their sleep and view status easily. Customers claimed the following helped improve their trust in the app:

Upcoming events
Talk to buddy
Meditation music
Daily Statistics

Testers also mentioned viewing the relaxation background gives them a feel that they are currently in that location.

However, on reading the events without much information about the upcoming event, they were thrown off as they didn't understand who all will be attending the event. This reduced tester's confidence and they responded by saying they wouldn't feel like joining the event.

Iteration based on User Testing

Based on the results, the design was changed to make it more user-friendly.

1. The count of people who will be attending the event was added.

2. The category name was made more personalized.

~ 90% users could able to improve their sleep cycle successfully.

Concluding Thoughts

This project helped me to understand about how statistics and meditation music can help people who have insomnia problems. The use of live sleep tracking gives a sense of relaxation in the user's mind and helps to improve their sleep. The addition of a new feature of "Talk to Buddy" helps user to to share with thoughts and concern by which they feel safe and relaxed mentally.