RestPad
Better Sleep is One Journal Log Away
Team
Problem and Design Overview
With college students living independently for the first time while juggling exams, careers, and social commitments, sleep is the last thing on their minds.
RestPad allows students to rate their sleep quality and track factors affecting it. Students can improve sleep quality through RestPad’s goal-oriented suggestions and personalized analytics.
Many college students report having poor sleep.
Design Research Process and Key Insights
As part of our design research process to learn how to tailor our design to user needs, we interviewed potential users.
We interviewed four undergraduate students at UW who report feeling not well-rested after waking up in the mornings, to gain insights into ways that they could improve their sleep quality.
Staying Away From Screens
We found that devices and screen usage was common as leading to poor sleep quality among all of the participants. Some participants would get immersed in their screens and lose track of time. Participant 4 said, “I could not turn off my phone after starting my Tiktok scroll. I could not fall asleep quickly, because I was thinking about those funny videos”. Upon learning this, we aimed to help users stay away from the screen in our design. We thus decided to take the digital journal with a dim-screened, Kindle-like device as our platform. Users could handwrite their daily entries.
Dim-screened, tablet-like design.
Different Individual Situations
A key insight we learned was that individuals had different reasons for their poor sleep quality. We found that most participants had consistent sleep durations, but inconsistent sleep schedules. As we learned the reasons behind the inconsistent sleep schedule, we discovered each participant had vastly different reasons. Since participants were in different majors and class standings, they encountered different stress levels. Keeping this in mind, we focused on increasing customization in our design.
Carriable Medium
During the interviews, some of the participants expressed their concerns about logging factors. They were afraid of forgetting to log factors regularly, especially if they could not do it easily and immediately. Keeping this in mind, we decided to choose a medium that is easy for users to carry around all day so that they can make entries no matter where they are.
One of our initial designs was a wearable device.
Iterative Design Process and Key Insights
We decided to focus on the following two primary tasks:
- Logging factors that may affect sleep quality
- Getting personalized suggestions quickly, based on the factors that user logs Based on the selected tasks and design idea of a thin, tablet-like device, we built an initial paper prototype, in which usability tests revealed small and big issues.
Enabling User Progress for Personalized Goals
During a usability test in Section, our participant stated that it would be nice to see user progress for the suggestions so that they can feel motivated to continue a healthy habit. This was crucial in our implementation of primary task #2. We therefore made edits to the suggestions page, where suggestions that previously had “Accept/Reject” options now come with a progress bar below them, to motivate habits that promote sleep quality.
Before and after.
Adding Additional Color-Coded Insights
During the usability tests, multiple participants reported being confused about how to navigate the analytics page. One of our desired missions with our design involves showing user patterns in the factors they log so that users can adjust their sleep habits accordingly. With this in mind, we made an alteration in the analytics page, where users can select a specific factor and it will highlight the days that the user logged it. Upon this insight and change, users can see patterns in how different factors affect sleep quality and make changes based on the patterns. This addition promoted engagement for users who retain better through visual data.
Before and after.
Improving Clarity of User Logs
Some participants in our usability tests reported being unsure of what the visual images meant in the Rate Sleep page. When asking users to log their sleep quality of the previous night, participants were unsure what the label-less emojis represented. Our intended purpose was to ask the user how they feel upon waking up (tired vs. well-rested), but it came across to the user as different emotions (sad, angry, etc.). To fix this issue, we slightly adjusted the emojis to represent tiredness after waking up rather than other emotions. We decided not to add labels for simplicity of design.
Before and after.
Resulting Design
For our final design, we had a thin, tablet-like device with the following main features: Users can log daily factors that affect sleep and nightly sleep quality. Users can add events to the calendar to relate sleep quality with stress and related factors. Users can opt-in to personalized suggestions on logged factors. Users can view analytics of tracked factors either weekly or monthly.
Our two primary tasks appeared as follows:
Task 1: Logging Factors that May Affect Sleep Quality
From the user dashboard, the user can log daily factors that affect sleep quality by navigating to the Log Factors page. Here, the user can choose from a selection of categories that they did during the day, such as caffeine, exercise, or naps. The user will then see a page of blank lines to elaborate on chosen categories. The morning after logging the factors, the user can rate the previous night’s sleep quality in the Rate Your Sleep page. The user can view their daily logs in the calendar in the user dashboard.
Task 1 as shown in digital mockup.
Task 2: Getting Personalized Suggestions Quickly
To see personalized suggestions, the user can open the Suggestions page from the dashboard. Here, there will be suggestions based on factors that the user previously logged. The user can choose to either accept or reject the suggestions. When accepted, a progress bar will appear under the suggestion, which can take days or weeks of continued progress. The user can also see analytics by navigating to the View Analytics page from the dashboard, where they can select specific factors to view additional insights.
Task 2 as shown in digital mockup.