Dec 16, 2020
Wake Up Well
How often do you hear “sleep well”? We focus on getting good night sleep, but what about those who sleep like rocks? What if the problem is to wake up? What about Wake Up Well?
For my first project at the General Assembly UX Design course I have paired with Hongxi — a deep sleeper — to find a solution for those who struggle getting out of the bed.
Having 4 days to prepare, a few in-depth interviews, research and testing I have designed a mindful mobile app prototype that can help in starting the day on a good note.
User research and insights
Hongxi is a night owl and a deep sleeper. She wakes up naturally after 10am. Due to the UX design course she has started recently, she needs to be up at 8am. As she finds it very difficult, she sets up 4 consecutive alarms between 7am and 8am, which have a very annoying sound. She also asks her boyfriend for help. She really wants to be productive from the start and and what is more important — she wants to wake up in a good mood.
Problem statement
Thanks to the interviews I was able to summarise Hongxi’s problem:
Hongxi is a night owl and she struggles to wake up in the morning, she wants to get out of the cozy bed quickly and happily, so that she can take on the new day.
Ideation
To solve this problem I came up with 5 different ideas.
AI technology that teaches you about your sleeping habits, movement alarm deactivator and a sleep calculator that tells you what time you should go to bed in order to wake up refreshed. These three didn’t meet Hongxi’s expectations.
I also thought of a slow and gentle sounds that wake up your brain subconsciously and / followed by a guided meditation session. Those were met with a lot of excitement. She found them gentle and practical. Especially when I added that meditation comes with in-bed stretches.
Storyboard
As my researched developed I decided to visualise the effect Wake Up Well would have on Hongxi and I continued my research. At this point I already had a bigger insight of what would fit the user and what would prove useful.
Wireframe
Knowing what the user really needs I was able to create a user flow representing a simple journey of them setting up the Wake Up Well alarm in the quickest and easiest way.
First prototype
Having the user flow in mind I have created a very simple prototype sketched on a piece of paper. As you can see what I drew was actually a long flow showing not one but two user flows.
In order to simplify it, I redrew the sketch on the computer using Adobe Xd. I was much happier with the digital version as it helped me clear up the unnecessary flow and focus on what’s really important.
User testing
Using the above mentioned prototype I have tested 3 users and they all agreed with no hesitation that the first two screens were very clear to understand. Nevertheless, the 3rd screen brought a lot of confusion.
The users didn’t understood what “pre-alarm” sound was. They also weren’t sure if the sound and meditation run together at the same time or separately. What is more, they weren’t sure how to choose the length and topic of the sound/ meditation. One of the users also wanted to have at least 5 sec teaser of the sound/ meditation before choosing it.
After landing on the last screen, the users said that they understood how this worked and they were satisfied that the app does it’s calculation and confirms the timings of the alarm system.
Second prototype
Having in mind all my discoveries I have created a new prototype that simplified the sound/meditation choosing page. I also changed “pre-alarm” into “intro” to get rid of the “alarming” name. We wanna wake up gentle after all.
In order to make the user journey even quicker I decided to have all the choices (time, date, intro, meditation) on one page.
Since I already had my prototype in Adobe Xd I added some colour and a logo.
Honxgi’s feedback
Hongxi was pleased to see the new prototype. She found it straight forward and clear. She said it was designed perfectly for her needs. After presenting the app to my UX design course classmates I was met with a lot of positive feedback as well.
Still, from here I would need to test the second prototype with a few more people to see what their impressions are, continue my research, tinker more… Discover, define, define, develop…
