Client
SleepPal
Team
Design: Hira Fareed
Developers: Owen, Sam
Product Manager: Jimmy
My Role
Designing the app end-to-end, working closely with developers
A little bit about SleepPal (formerly Xsleep)
SleepPal assists users in tailoring their sleep routines to establish healthy and consistent sleep habits. It offers a variety of soothing audio options, including light music and guided meditation, to enhance the sleep experience.
* Redesigned app launching soon *
Challenge
The old app had low user engagement and high dropout rates due to onboarding and usability issues. This led to low conversion and retention rates, prompting a request for a complete app redesign.
Design Thinking
EMPATHIZE
Research through user testing in current design
I started doing desk research, reading articles to get a sense of how sleep apps works ,to gain every possible knowledge required to design the best experience for my target audience. I Interviewed 5 users to understand their thought process while using the app. I observed their behaviour and the frustrations in the process.
This was done to;
• Gather unbiased user opinions
• Find issues with complex flows
• Get the insights to help create a better overall user experience
Some pain points Identified during video interviews include;
• Poor/Difficult onboarding process
• Difficulty in understanding the UI
• Poor navigation
Competitive Analysis to understand the market
I did competitive analysis to understand the market. I found out that a lot of sleep aid apps include guided meditations, sleep analysis, music/sounds, integrated alarms, and tips/information. During the research phase I also documented some basic design guidelines that I felt would be important later down the line
DEFINE
Affinty mapping
Next, I compiled all the feedback, insights, and pain points I got through my user testing and grouped similar ones. This helped me brainstorm and develop potential ideas and gave a clearer view of what was important to users while keeping in mind the business goals and objectives.
Brainstorming for Possible Solutions & New Features
into our design workshops worked out wonderfully as our engineers and program managers came with deep product knowledge about the legacy and history of Bookings and the product's backend infra. This gave us diverse & comprehensive perspectives as we charted out a plan for MVP.
IDEATE
User flow
We kept the flow as simple as possible in order to create a fast and clean experience for the user. Our aim is to reduce stress in order to sleep better so we had to come up with a quick and easy to fill assessment that would take a minimum amount of time.
Low fi and concept testing
Sketching makes a big part of my process in the early stages too (as does coffee). For me pen and paper is an opportunity to get ideas out of my head without getting bogged down with pixels and design systems
After iterations of sketches, we jumped into the wireframes.here are some initial wireframes of different screens
PROTOTYPE
Creating a Design System
Sketching makes a big part of my process in the early stages too (as does coffee). For me pen and paper is an opportunity to get ideas out of my head without getting bogged down with pixels and design systems
THE REDESIGN
1. Home screen and navbar
Sketching makes a big part of my process in the early stages too (as does coffee). For me pen and paper is an opportunity to get ideas out of my head without getting bogged down with pixels and design systems
2. Check In/ Alarm clock
Sketching makes a big part of my process in the early stages too (as does coffee). For me pen and paper is an opportunity to get ideas out of my head without getting bogged down with pixels and design systems
3. Music Page
Sketching makes a big part of my process in the early stages too (as does coffee). For me pen and paper is an opportunity to get ideas out of my head without getting bogged down with pixels and design systems
* Redesigned app launching soon *
Learnings
• In-depth analysis of the design decisions is really vital to make sure you’re fulfilling your user's needs.
• I got to understand the common UI and UX paradigms.
• Small changes in design can make a huge impact on the whole user experience.
• I worked on a lot of iterations to arrive at the right solution. During this process, I realised that there’s nothing like too many iterations because the more you iterate the more chances of the best solution.
• As a UX designer my thoughts need to remain user experience driven and user research data based. Good UX begins in data and continues in data. Fixing bad UX is much more expensive than doing it right the first time.
