Opening Question
What’s something we can all use more of? I don’t know about you, but one of my top answers would be sleep.
In fact, >33% of Americans regularly do not get enough sleep at night. This lack of sleep and even greater lack of quality sleep can lead to a large number and range of issues, some of which I'm sure all have experienced.
Circadian is my take on the why’s and how’s of quality sleep, here was my process
Introduction
Team
Me (Solo passion project)
Tools
Figma
Google Forms
Timeline
2.5 weeks
May 14-31, 2023
Problem
As a college student, I’ve been familiarized with sleep. Mainly the lack thereof.
However, as an athlete I have been intrigued by the importance of sleep on performance and recovery, which led to an interest in sleep as a whole. This gap between knowledge and action peaked my interest
Why do we get less sleep than we should and how can we fix it?
Research
How bad is it?
To tackle this question, I read through research articles from sources like the CDC and Harvard as well as conducted my own research. The conclusions I came to were nothing short of staggering.
Over 33% of Americans regularly don't get enough sleep a night
57.1% of my research participants felt that they got an insufficient amount of sleep at night
"Previous research showed that up to 75% of college students reported occasional sleep disturbances" -The CDC
Ok so it's pretty bad, but why?
Next, I looked into common reasons people aren't getting as much sleep as they need. By this I mean, of course, high quality sleep. For example, someone could sleep 7 continuous hours in one night and another person could sleep 7 hours by sleeping, waking up after an hour, and repeating
Here are some of the most common reasons
What can we do about it?
My research did not stop at just the problem, but also looking into potential solutions. Sure we tend not to get enough sleep, but that doesn't mean we can't. Below are some of the best proven ways to improve sleep
Solution
The solution I came up with has 3 main parts
Routines
Arguably the most important aspect of my project, a sleep routine is just what it sounds: A routine someone does to prepare for sleep.
Dr. Heather Wright, M.D, states 2 main benefits.
1) Like any other routine, bedtime routines establish habits that help our brains recognize when it is time to sleep
2) Bedtime routines also play an important role in reducing late-night stress and anxiety
With this in mind, I wanted the center of the project to be something that helped people build a routine, do it, and stick to it.
Education
“Sleep is important”. “I need 8 hours”. “A good sleep helps me function”. These are all generally agreed upon, but they are also surface level. Another barrier to healthy sleep is a lack of knowledge, both how sleep can affect you and how you can affect it.
So in my next solution, I wanted to provide an educational feature that helps users learn more about sleep
Alarms
How many alarms do you use? 1? 3? 5? With my many anti-morning friends, I’ve seen it go even higher than that
Even with this alarm abundance, they tend to be ineffective because they are just too easy to snooze. In my user research, I saw that a whopping 66.7% of my participants either snoozed often or occasionally. So my solution here was simple: make a more effective alarm.
I did this by including all the normal features of an alarm and adding custom ways to turn the alarms off (e.g: unplugging from the charger to turn off)
Lofi
Instead of the cookie cutter lofi that I would normally do, I treated this phase of my project as pure ideation. What that means is you’ll see a bunch of sketching, notes, thoughts, and research integrated with each other on these pages of sketchbook paper.
Also, instead of feeling the need to finish most of this stage at the start, I found it much more fluid for the project as I sketched and wrote as needed.
Dashboard
Learning Page
Routines Page
Hifi
I also approached this phase a little differently than I usually do. Instead of having a fully developed midfi mainly just missing visual aspects, I treated this hifi as a mix of figuring out the midfi features and making the final look of the project.
However, this did come with its fair share of iterations.
Design Decisions
At this point I had another crucial decision on my hands: the name of this project. I was between the option you clicked on, Circadian, and another option I really liked, Sleeper.
The idea behind Sleeper was to help the user become a better sleeper, a “professional” sleeper even.
On the other hand, a circadian rhythm is essentially our biological clock that puts us in 24 hour day cycles. This would really emulate the routine feature of the product as well as the holistic approach to sleep that I strived for.
In the end, I thought Circadian embodied the product more. It also gave me a new appreciation for identity which is something I have come to notice more and more in the design around me. From company products to city signs, restaurant decor to softwares, architecture to the car I drive. There is always a sense of identity, and it is so valuable. Not to mention the word circadian just sounds sweet.
What I Learned
Unlike all the other projects on my portfolio, this one was purely a passion project to allow me a space to design and build something I wanted to build. That being the case, yes I love the designs I was able to make and the results, but the best part about it is all I learned along the way.
Here are some of those things
Design
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Auto Layout: Just how powerful it is in making clean designs for the product as well as the project file.
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Visual Design Trends: This is something I really wanted to emphasize because, even though it is far from the whole of design, good looking products really were the ones that caught my eye.
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Device Specific Design: This mainly came through with a bit of iOS notification designing.
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How I Work: Since this project was a true passion project, I was able to work on it without some constraints I’d work with otherwise. For example, as you’ll see in my lofi section, I purely ideated on paper as opposed to the more rigid lofi designing I’d do otherwise.
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Why I Love Design: I picked this project up because I was missing design, and I’m glad that during this project I found myself losing track of time on multiple occasions working, learning, building, and iterating.
Project
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How to organize: This is a bit subjective since it was a solo project, but I thought I organized this project pretty well with not only auto layout, but other things like components, local styles, and naming systems.
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Documentation: I tried to keep a running document with work updates, notes, ideas, resources, a functions list, and just self feedback which ended up helping tremendously throughout the project. It’s also nice to see how far I’ve come!
Reflection
Overall, I really loved this project. I learned a lot and it just gave me a space to design freely which I missed. This project also allowed me to design a project I was truly passionate about since I narrowed my options down to literally anything I could think of. There are, however, a few things I would have done differently and am looking to fix as I continue with this project.
Document
I didn’t start writing a work log until a few days after starting the designs, and throughout the project I did not update it as regularly as I would have liked.
Learn
I was and still am excited about this project. It gives as much (maybe even more) than I put in, but most importantly it gives me an opportunity to learn and grow exponentially. Whether that’s as a designer or even just learning interesting facts about sleep, I don’t want to miss out on it!
Next Steps
Though I really loved the turnout of this project, it is still only in its infancy. I only had allotted a few weeks to the progress you see on this case study and plan to further add to it now that I’ve got a prototype. Here’s a list of features I am looking to add next time around
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Shopping feature where the app can suggest products to aid in routines as well as general sleep related products (e.g: mattresses and pillows)
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More ways to shut off an alarm
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Note taking feature for sleep reflection
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Music feature with collections of music/sounds that help with sleep
