Student Sleep App
Date: February 2023 - May 2023
Tags: literature review, user survey, diary study, co-design, affinity diagram, figma, miro technical report
App: Student Sleep App
Sleep plays a critical role in overall well-being, academic performance, and mental health of college students. I worked in a team of 5 undergraduate students with the objective to identify the primary factors influencing sleep quality among students and produce an intervention that improves various aspects of their sleep routine to ensure improved sleep quality.
Final Design
Research
Users
College students (specifically researching students at Cornell University)
Literature Review
We started our research by reviewing existing research surrounding the issue of poor sleep quality among students. We noted key findings from 14 sources of literature and synthesized common themes and trends. This is what we found:
Usage of electronic devices prior to going to bed leads to reduced melatonin levels
Regularity of sleep schedules had an impact on sleep quality
Stress (physical, emotional and academic), tension, and anxiety negatively impact sleep quality
Deteriorated sleep quality caused by excessive disruption of sleep patterns leads to poor mental ability
Diary Study (+Survey)
We decided that a diary study would provide us with insight into how the sleeping habits of college students evolve over time, especially given the variability day-by-day for students depending on their schedule and current circumstances.
Our research participants would keep a diary for 1 week which prompted questions of factors related to their sleep that they would fill out after waking up and before going to bed. By doing pre/post study surveys and obtaining copies of our participants’ schedules, we were able to see how a students’ specific context could inform the diary results.
Diary Findings
We were able to get a better understand the nuances of student work, commitments, and other activities in relation to sleep quality and duration. We found:
electronic devices were used to play audio recordings such as white noise or sounds of calming waves to help students fall asleep and to set alarms to wake up
participants frequently utilized digital devices to access social media platforms prior to sleeping. Users who engaged in electronic device usage also reported difficulty falling asleep, remaining asleep, or feeling tired the following morning
participants engaged activities that would aid towards relaxation prior to sleep like spending time with friends, watched videos and movies, or scrolled through social media
responses noted commitments that were physically demanding such as dancing or working out held positive effects on sleep quality, making it easier to fall asleep due to physical exhaustion
responses cited that fatigue induced from commitments like exams and club meetings during the earlier weekdays held an adverse effect on emotional and physical wellness and productivity during the following days later in the week
Co-Design Workshop
We decided to conduct a co-design workshop to ensure inclusive designs that take into consideration the experiences and perspectives of the individuals that we are designing for in order to create a solution that is relevant and meaningful to them.
Icebreaker Activity: Begin the workshop with an icebreaker to help participants get to know each other and feel more comfortable in a collaborative setting.
Context Exploration: A discussion with participants about their personal experiences and insights related to sleep quality and the challenges they face as college students.
Brainstorming: Brainstorming session to generate ideas for interventions within the problem space. This encourages participants to think creatively and freely about ideas
Co-design Activity: We will have our participants craft an imaginary magic machine that would produce the best possible sleep quality. This will help us think more deeply about the problem that we are trying to solve.
Summary and Feedback: Participants present their ideas through skits and have time for an open discussion about the ideas. Additional exit interviews are done to better understand how participants felt about the activities and answer more questions about the values of their ideas.
Magic Machine Artifacts
Co-Design Findings
During the content exploration stage of the co-design study, the discussion revealed that students heavily emphasized the significance of proper living conditions on sleep quality and duration. More specifically, personalized sleeping conditions were required to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep.
We were able to draw upon several common trends and insights that could also help towards development of our final design prototype. Participants believed that focusing on the following areas aided towards improvement of sleep: ambient environment, mindfulness, physical activity, sleep environment, electronic device management, time management, and prioritization of sleep.
Our participants created the following magic machines: alarm robot, optimized sleep chamber, sleeping headphones, on-campus sleep pods, sleep massage machine, bird noise machine
Design
Rather than focusing on factors that are outside of a student’s control such as academic workload and social commitments, we decided to focus on the factors that they do have control over.
In both the diary studies and co-design workshops, participants voiced their concerns about sleeping conditions being one of the main contributing factors to sleep quality. We believe that full control over their environment will allow them to set up the most optimal sleeping conditions for themselves and significantly improve sleep quality.
Based on our findings from the studies, we conceptualized an app with a focus on allowing the user to personalize their ideal sleep conditions.
The app has three pages: the home page, the routine page, and the profile page.
In the home page dashboard, the app displays the current parameters and controls for changing said parameters. These parameters include lights, sounds, and temperature control.
In the routine page, individuals can manage their sleep routine through several settings including alarms for bedtime and night time, setting a sound, managing the lights, changing the temperature, and locking down their technology.
On the profile page, users can see statistics related to their sleep for that week, personalized recommendations, and articles with tips related to improving sleep.
Looking Back
The elicitation methods we used revealed the complexities of student sleep and there were many possible solutions, given the rapid time constraint for the project, we opted for a solution we could feasibly prototype rather than some of the more creative options.