SleepHealth

Designed an interactive sleep behavior tool to improve users’ sleep health


Designed for

SI 684 Designing Consumer Health Technologies at University of Michigan

Role & Contribution

UX Research
Interaction Design
User Interface Design
Branding

Context

Insomnia is a prevalent sleep disorder affecting approximately 33% of the adult population. For adults aged 30-40, insomnia can be particularly disruptive, interfering with work productivity, personal relationships, and overall well-being.

How might we design an intervention tool that helps adults in this age group improve their sleep hygiene through a set of behavioral and environmental practices that promote better sleep?

Contextual Research:

Insomnia & Health:

  • Insomnia is a prevalent sleep disorder affecting approximately 33% of the adult population, with significant impacts on health and quality of life (NIH)

  • 15-20% of individuals diagnosed with Insomnia will suffer from depression (Harvard)

Health Tracking Applications:

  • Health and fitness applications saw a volume of 3.6 billion downloads worldwide (Statista)

  • 17% of users are dependent on applications to track their sleep health (mHealth)

Design Process

Platform Success Criteria:

Reduction in insomnia symptoms:

Decreasing the amount of time someone is lying in bed while awake. Either before falling asleep, if they wake up in the night, or lying in bed after waking up. This is a major part of sleep restriction therapy.

 Improvement in sleep quality:

An increase in self-reported sleep quality, with users reporting "good" or "very good" sleep quality at least 5 nights per week, compared to their baseline.


Adherence to sleep hygiene practices:

Users consistently follow at least half of their targeted sleep hygiene behaviors (going to bed on time, not laying in bed awake for more than 20 minutes, not drinking or eating too close to bedtime, not having caffeine too late in the day)  for at least 6 out of 7 nights per week.


Strategy & Solution

Product Strategy:

For the app to improve sleep hygiene, my team and I drew on several behavioral and psychological theories to optimize user engagement and effectiveness. For example, we utilized persuasive performance feedback strategies, particularly valence framing, to focus on positive reinforcement. Instead of emphasizing the potential negative outcomes of poor sleep by saying things such as "you’ll feel worse tomorrow”, the app highlights what users have already accomplished, like progress toward building better routines. This type of feedback is shown to boost self-efficacy, which is critical for motivating continued behavior change. Additionally, our app uses specific, difficult goals such as setting personalized sleep quality targets to increase user motivation. Research indicates that such goals, paired with feedback on goal progress, significantly enhance performance.

Solution:

Bedtime Routine:

Objective: The Bedtime routine is available through the homepage, but also allows users to set up their own routine by themselves. It incorporates new activities into their bedtime routines to improve their sleep quality and allow for a personalized list of reminders.

Feature Details:

Routine Planner:

Allowing a survey-like selection of options for users to plan out bedtime routine activities.

Alarm setting:

Giving the user freedom to choose various times through selection for meditation and alarms.

Toggle:

Toggle between bedtime, where users can set up times to go to bed and notification reminders, and Routine, where users can create activities.

Diary:

Objective:: The Diary feature will allow users to track their sleep patterns and emotional well-being on a nightly basis. Giving the user a way to track their own progres to see improvements in their sleep hygiene.

Feature Details:

Pre-Sleep Routines:

Users will have the ability to log their pre-sleep routines, bedtime and wake-up times, nap details and their morning feeling.

History tab:

Providing a comprehensive overview of logged sleep data, allowing users to review and compare quality across different days.

Rating Scale:

A rating scale designed from 1-10 to allow users to provide numerical metrics for homescreen graphs on their sleep quality and time.

Meditation & Sleep Education:

Objective:  Allows users to find meditations and sleep education content to listen to, helping them relax and learn about building healthy sleep habits. Giving the user a distraction-free method to learn and educate themselves.

Feature Details:

Toggle:

The user will have a toggle to view either meditation techniques or educational content.

Day Tracking:

To encourage users to meditate daily, the app provides them with an overview of how many days they have meditated (their meditation streak) and gives them a positive message to encourage them to keep meditating or urge them to meditate.

Scroll Content:

Allowing users a diverse amount of content to scroll through giving them the freedom to choose.