SleepLog
Client: Conceptual student project
Deliverable: Android app prototype
Timeline: 1 week
Role: Solo project
My first UX case study, SleepLog underlined the importance of user-centered design and iterative testing. Through hands-on experience, I learned how crucial it is to empathize with users, gather actionable feedback, and continuously refine design solutions to enhance usability and satisfaction.
Check out the process deck for a more in-depth overview!
The Premise
SleepLog was a solo student project for the Google UX Design Certificate. The course tasked us to create an app and provided several prompts, such as an park reservation system. I chose go off the beaten path and address a problem from my own life: sleep.
The Problem
Proper sleep is vital for health and well-being, yet in today's fast-paced world, it’s all too easy to neglect.
Constraints
A mobile sleep tracker only works if it is used regularly: The main constraint of this conceptual project is that it had to be a mobile app. That created a central issue my design had to solve for: Users don’t just need to like the app, they had to embrace it as a daily habit.
Goals
Shaped by my constraints, prior to guidance from research, my preliminary goals were:
Find out what would make users return to a sleep tracker again and again.
Make an app that would encourage daily use, without employing dark/deceptive patterns. This is a health app. It’s use and practices should be healthy.
The Solution
The aim of SleepLog was to create a sleep tracker that users would find easy to use and genuinely helpful. My objective was to create an intuitive and comprehensive tool that meets user needs with minimal friction along the main user flow. That ease of use, coupled with providing rich sleep data, is what my research indicated as the key reason users adopt and continue using sleep trackers.
(The initial design was executed on the smallest Android frame, for the ease of future scalability).
The Research
Methodology
For the initial research round, I relied on a competitive analysis and user interviews which I later synthesized into personas to help center the user in my mind before the design phase. This dual approach was powerful: the competitive analysis revealed business opportunities, while the user interviews uncovered genuine user needs.
Findings
The interviews were the most valuable. They revealed that, contrary to my initial expectation, most users wanted more data and features from their sleep tracker. This lead to a less minimalist approach as I ideated.
The Research
Who is our user? What do they actually want to achieve?
Methodology
For the initial research round, I relied on a competitive analysis and user interviews which I later synthesized into personas to help center the user in my mind before the design phase. This dual approach is powerful: the competitive analysis reveals business opportunities, while the user interviews uncover genuine user needs.
Findings
The interviews were the most valuable. They revealed that, contrary to my initial expectation, most users wanted more data and features from their sleep tracker. This lead to a less minimalist approach as I ideated.
To learn more about the users, I conducted in-depth interviews with 6 individuals who use, or had used, a sleep tracker. This helped to identify why individuals used a tracker in the first place, as well as the pain points that made some stop.
Number of participants: 6
Gender: 4 female/2 male
Ages: 18-50 years old
Interviews
Competitive Analysis
The analysis was crucial to learning what features users may expect and design pitfalls that could be improved upon. I confined the analysis to Android devices as this would be the initial and primary market for SleepLog. In features alone, Sleep As Android is the stiffest competition on the market. However, the competitive analysis revealed it also had the most bloated UI. SleepLog can easily compete by having a more appealing and goal oriented design.
Direct Competitors: 4
Discontinued Competitor: 1
Indirect Competitor: 1
Insight
No one is actually asking for minimalism on the data or feature side.
Need
Users want comprehensive feedback and detailed information about their sleep, with a preference for more extensive data and insights.
Insight
Saving sleep should be as streamlined as possible. Save and go!
Need
Users want as much sleep and as little book keeping as possible.
Personas
From the interview data, I crafted three personas and the user problem statement to use as guidance during the design process.
As a busy professional, I want to track my sleep so that I can improve my overall health and productivity by ensuring I get enough quality rest each night.
How might we incentivize Haley to be mindful of her sleep?
The Design
What are the design solutions to our user problems?
How can we help achieve their goals?
Lo-fi Prototype
Thanks to extensive paper wireframing and a thorough competitive analysis, the selected design synthesizes many of the best features of SleepLog’s competitors while honing its focus on the primary User Goal of the app, which is logging sleep. Not achievement badges (Sleep as Android) or AI Dreamscapes (SleepScore).
1st Usability Study
Type: Moderated
Number of Participants: 5
Gender: 3 female/2 male
Ages: 18-80 years old
Findings
The Results
User Impact
Over 2 usability tests, 100% of users were able to complete the main user flow and log a sleep session.
All testers found the app useful. Several voiced the desire to start tracking their sleep again.
Design Impact
Established the foundation for the app’s Design System by leveraging a customized Material Design Kit and integrating bespoke components tailored to the app’s needs. This groundwork and documentation will speed up future designs and ensure cohesion.
Established the start of an accessibility minded culture for the app by ensuring the initial design included things like a keyboard option for the Time Picker and WCAG AAA compliant colors and notating these conscious choices within the Figma file.
Business Impact
After launch, I think one of the truest measurements of success for this sort of app would be KPIs like Retention Rate.
SleepLog works best as a daily tool. It takes 66 days on average to create a habit. Retention beyond 66 days would prove I’d made a reliable and valued tool in the lives of users! Daily Active Users (DAU) would also be useful.
Personal Takeaways
Never assume. Always solve for the User, not yourself. This point was driven home by the 6 user interviews and 2 rounds of moderated usability studies. The initial user interviews checked an assumption I had made, that users would want a more minimalist app, when in reality all interviewees wanted as much data about their sleep as possible.
Commit to a Design System early. I began this project in a more freeform manner and only really committed to a customized Material Design Kit about halfway through. This lead to a lot of backtracking as I corrected colors and font sizes throughout the file.