Video
Home Screen
Introduction
As a college student, it’s very hard to get the sleep that we need. Many college students get less than 8 hours of sleep because of stress, the workload of assignments which makes them stay up late, extra curricular activities, and bad thoughts.
This is my Senior Year Capstone Project.
Inspiration
Sleep Patterns can give you a clear understanding on what is happening during your sleep. The REM cycle plays an important role when it comes to dreaming, memory, and brain development. While wrist wearables and motion trackers can give you detailed insights on how long you are spending in each sleep cycle, having a headband that measures your brain activity can give you an idea on what is going on in your brain while you sleep.
Goals
How this app will help users:
- ideal for people who are unsure on how to tackle sleep problems and want to understand their sleeping patterns
- ideal for people who meditate before sleeping
- ideal for people who sleep with soothing music or sounds to enhance relaxation and better productivity
Research
According to Cornell University, 25% of college students in a survey said lack of sleep affected academic performance negatively while in USF, more than 80% say they are tired and sleepy about 3 days a week. Having good sleep is beneficial for better academic performance.
For the first phase of the design process, to empathize with my users, I have conducted research by interviewing 3 college students and gave 30 students a survey on asking how many hours of sleep they get per day as a college student. I found that a 80% of my survey participants get close to 4-6 hours of sleep and their main reason is because of stress, bad thoughts, extracurricular activities, and coursework.
For the second phase of the design process, to define the problem, I have created two personas to figure out which type of users from my research could be interested in an app like SleepTight.
Design
Color Palette:
Font:
App Logo:
The Roboto font has a lot of round edges and fonts with round edges are used to convey calmness, softness, and comfort making it friendly and inviting. Since SleepTight's goal is to help people get better sleep in a calming, friendly manner, Roboto seemed to be the perfect font.
Comparing Multiple Sleeping Apps
After understanding the users' needs, I compared multiple sleeping apps and realized out of the three apps, there was at-least something missing. For example, Calm and Sleep do not have a Sleep Tracker which many of the users wanted. Calm does not track any sleep data. However Calm, Sleep, and Muse have music & sounds and meditations. Muse on the other hand has a sleep tracker and meditations, but doesn't have music and sounds.
Features
Sleep Tracker
Monitors and records a person's sleep patterns to provide data on the quality of sleep from wrist wearables, bluetooth headbands & masks, devices attached to bed, etc. and uses sensors to collect data on movement, breathing patterns, heart rate, brain activity, and any disruptions and provides graphs for users to identify how they sleep.
Discover
Ability for users to browse for sounds, meditation and motivational videos, relaxation techniques, goals, explore new content, and access personalized recommendations and engage with the app by finding new friends to follow.
Music & Sounds
Ability for users to browse for sounds and music that match their mood, sleep better, enhance relaxation, focus, and provide background noise for better productivity. Users can add multiple sounds to mix. Users can also search for other sounds of their preference to add to their music library.
Meditations
Guided meditations to immerse yourself in calming guidance of experienced meditation teachers, famous celebrities, from a variety of sessions such as stress relief, relaxation, sleep, focus, and more. Meditation timer to pace your meditations, and track your meditation journey to observe growth. Connect with a like minded community of meditators within the app.
Some of my friends that I have interviewed said that they barely use sleeping apps but still go on YouTube for meditation videos and soothing music. Once I mentioned that the sleeping app would have a sleep tracker, they were interested in it and thought it should be kept, because they will be able to understand their sleeping posture, sleep patterns, etc. What made them more interested about the sleep tracker was the tracking of the brain activity through a headband. Not many people have heard of it. I thought adding this would be the best solution to improve sleep and meditation.
Lo Fi Wireframes
High Fidelity Wireframes
Pairing Device Calibration
Working Prototype
Reflection
I believe what worked well in my project was my visual design style, its aesthetic appeal with the color palette I have used to create SleepTight.
Couple things I will add in the future include features such as bedtime stories for children as I will change the age requirement to all ages. Users will enter their age when they create a new account by putting their birthday. Right now, I wanted to focus on college students for this Capstone. I received valuable feedback from my classmates, my friends, family, the UX Club of UT Dallas, and teachers on the visual appeal of the app, the features, and the progress of the app.