Sleep Diary
Role - Researcher, UI designer, UX designer
Sleep Diary is an app which can help bedtime procrastinator release their pressure and negative emotions before sleep. It provides private and safe space for users. By writing things down, users will feel more relax and have a better sleep.
The goal of the project was to reform the patterns of bedtime procrastination and to create a solution to improve the problem.
The challenge was to define the problem of bedtime procrastination pattern in deeper level and reform the solution from psychological perspective.
Problem Space
Patterns of Bedtime Procrastination (24hr cycle)
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End the day and get into bed
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Feel sleepy or not, but still want to stay awake longer
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Start entertainment (browsing the internet, playing video games, watching TV, etc.)
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Delay bedtime and sleep time is reduced
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Be tired and frustrated the next day
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Repeat the behaviour
Three conditions are required for staying up late to be considered bedtime procrastination:
1. The behaviour reduces one’s total sleep time
2. Have no valid and essential reasons for sleep later than intended,
such as external events or underlying illness
3. Be aware of the negative consequences of delaying one’s bedtime
Potential Group affected by Pattern
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Students
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Women
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People with evening chronotype
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People who procrastinate in other aspects of their life
Problems with Pattern
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Resulting in sleep deprivation, people’s mind and body can’t get enough rest, which can cause negative influences on health.
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Thinking, memory, decision-making will be damaged by insufficient sleep
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It’s related to mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety
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Lead negative emotions, such as shame and guilt because people know that they can’t control themselves of repeating the bad behaviour
Research
Two main reasons of bedtime procrastination:
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Daytime Pressure
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Bedtime Entertainment
“Factors that contribute [to bedtime procrastination] are working hours, often elevated to 12 hours and beyond, workplace expectations to be available outside of hours, and overtime to be worked. Modern working patterns and technologies are blurring boundaries between work and domestic lives, giving rise to a feeling of living at work. Peer pressure to achieve, self-learn, have valuable hobbies, and practice well-being can all drive behaviour that eats into a sleep schedule.”
- Lee Chambers
Contrary to typical procrastination behaviour, bedtime doesn’t involve voluntarily delaying aversive tasks. This occurs because people don’t want to quit other activities. The most commonly reported behaviours are watching YouTube videos, watching movies, listening to music, and sending texts.
WIREFRAMES
I developed three features of the app. The main function is sleep diary which provides users opportunity to relieve their stress and negative thoughts. Second, it provides the sleep history and the recorder of days of keeping the diary to show users their sleeping situation. Third, the app has a product character to build bond with users and makes them feel safe and private.
USER FLOW DIAGRAM
TESTING
Preference Test
Option 1
Option 2
In this test I provided two styles which were respectively colourful and simple. The test result shows that 90% of participants preferred the colourful style, and they think the emotional face can show the information more directly.
1st Click Test
For the first click test, I asked “Where would you click if you finish the writing and want to save the contents?” The heat map shows there were 70% of participants chose the check mark button, which is the right place. The test proves that this button is the effective choice, and the position also works.
IDEAL EXPERIENCE MAP
The ideal experience map showed the new pattern I recreated for users - Finish all day work and prepare to go to bed, lay down and open the app, release pressure and negative feelings, clean head and feel better, fall asleep without stress.
STRENGTHS OF MY REFORM PATTERN
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Allowing users to release stress and negative emotions
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Avoiding bringing pressure to users
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Forming spontaneous and relaxed behaviour
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Friend mode for creating private and safe space
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Psychological suggestion to improve the habit
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Competitor analysis allowed me to understand the current solutions existing in the market and to get experience from these app.
The apps relating to sleep such as lifestyle organization and meditation functions are very common, and there is space for development and innovation among them.
Strengths
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Sleep assessment: track users’ last night’s sleep experience and get an overview of sleep patterns.
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Personalize plan: optimize users’ sleep space for a good night’s sleep.
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Nature sound and meditation: provide peaceful and calm environment to make users sleep better
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Focus timer: immersive mode which allows users get rid of digital obsession.
Weaknesses
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Can’t record personal mood and thinking
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Have no feedback on a psychological level
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Have no reward system for the users who need approval to keep the habit
PERSONA
TASK FLOW
Task flow helped visualize the pattern and summarized the potential results of the process before sleep.
EMPATHY MAP
PAIN/GAIN MAP
Pains
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Can’t help playing phone
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Have weak self-control to force to sleep early
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Being anxious of something happened before or something is going to happen in future will make more difficult to fall asleep
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Enjoy the time before sleeping, obsessed with the entertainment, doesn’t want to finish the happy time early
Gains
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Have consciousness about the problem of bedtime procrastination
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Understand the negative impacts on self health and life
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Have willing to change the situation
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Tried many ways before, might find the most effective way easily
EXPERIENCE MAP
From the research and analysis, bedtime procrastinator don't like to be forced to overcome the behaviour.
The key issue is that the problem needs to be improved from psychological perspective. According to the previous research, procrastination originally comes from psychology, so I wanted to improve the behaviour pattern from root cause.
Due to my own experience and the research, I found that the key point is to release the pressure. So this is the direction of my next step to develop.
RELEASE PRESSURE
Bedtime entertainment can't solve the problem and makes the situation worse because it can’t release the real stress in people’s inner thoughts. It can only paralyze the brain and stimulate the production of dopamine. It makes people forget the day pressure and negative emotions temporarily, but it can’t fix the deeper issue.
Based on the requirement above, a way that avoiding to bring any more forced idea on users needed to be developed, which means it must let users feel relax and stick with it willingly.
WRITING DIARY
Writing diary has been proved that it can effectively improve anxiety and other negative emotions. Thus, I planned to mix the concept into my application and provide a private and safe place for users to improve their problem of bedtime procrastination.
SOLUTIONS
RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
OUTCOMES
CONCLUSION
The process of reforming a problem pattern provides me the experience of investigating exisiting situation and developing potential space. In retrospect the collection of user data in the early stage and the usability test need to be improved. The function of the app still has weakness such as the sleep history showing to users is incomplete and there is more explorable space for the diary feature.