Get a better night’s rest with
Sleepy Soup
Raise your hand if you:
💤 Have ever struggled with your sleep schedule?
📱 Found yourself scrolling on your phone or watching TV late into the night, and suddenly realize it is WAY past your bedtime?
😓 Have tried to improve your sleep, only to fall back into the same patterns as always?
If so, you are not alone! Getting good sleep (aka “sleep hygiene”) is a cornerstone of our health and well-being, and it can be really hard to achieve. It is essential for optimal physical and mental health. Chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to a host of serious health issues. Having good sleep hygiene helps us to show up as our best selves!
The problem is that screen time hinders many folks’ sleep- so much of our world exists digitally, both our work and play. We are almost always looking at a screen! But unfortunately, excessive screen time disrupts our sleep. Therefore, people need to limit screen time, because it is impacting their sleep.
While there are tools out there to improve our sleep, existing apps rely heavily on self-reported data, wearables, and relaxation methods, often neglecting our pre-sleep behaviors. Sleepy Soup bridges this gap by focusing on calming routines and social accountability, fostering healthy sleep habits before users even hit the pillow.
Sleepy Soup is a mobile app that empowers users to improve their sleep hygiene by completing pre-sleep routines, which are modeled after various soup recipes, with friends. Users can choose from various bedtimes and wind-down routines that cover multiple research-backed nighttime pain points, such as:
Meditation Miso, which contains guided meditations to get you ready to sleep.
Cozy Reading Ramen, which guides users through reading a book and drinking a warm cup of tea.
Couch Potato Soup, which encourages users to get light exercise in the evening to help improve their sleep quality.
And many more!
By combining personalized relaxation activities with social accountability, Sleepy Soup helps break the cycle of late-night screen time and fosters healthier sleep habits.
Learn more about my design process below!
Discovery Phase 🔍
Discovery Phase 🔍
I set out to learn as much as I could about sleep products and peoples’ relationships with sleep. After market research and user interviews, here is what I learned:
While users recognize the importance of sleep hygiene, they struggle to consistently implement positive changes. This is often due to a lack of motivation, accountability, and enjoyable sleep routines. People have tried everything- from fancy pillows and sheets to meditation apps to sleep medications and more.
We are having a sleep crisis! Modern life has cultivated a sleep-deprived culture. The constant barrage of screens and relentless demands on our time have disrupted our natural sleep rhythms. This is bad for our health and can lead to complications down the road.
1
2
Everyone is so addicted to their screens! The allure of screens exacerbates sleep problems, with users admitting to excessive phone usage and TV time before bed, disrupting their sleep cycles and exposing them to a lot of blue light. This reliance on technology, ironically, is at odds with achieving restful nights.
3
Define & Design Phase ✏️
Define & Design Phase ✏️
With this knowledge, I defined the target user, brainstormed ideas to solve the problem, and built out the framework for Sleepy Soup.
To better understand and empathize with my target audience, I created an empathy map, which then helped me to create a user persona and define the HMW.
How might we limit screen time before bed?
I had two ideas from Crazy 8’s that I combined into an app I called Sleepy Soup:
Users will follow “recipes”, or pre-defined sleep routines, composed of calming activities such as reading, meditation, and gentle stretching alongside a friend they invite to join them. This provides them with social connection and accountability, while also walking them through healthy and effective nighttime routines.
This solution capitalizes on TSP’s motivations while giving them alternative behaviors to mindlessly scrolling on their phone before bed.
Laying out the framework for a good night of sleep:
I used three rounds of Crazy 8’s to visualize ideas and brainstorm a solution to helping people limit their screen time before bed.
Bring it to Life ✨
Bring it to Life ✨
With the foundation of my design planned out and knowledge of what is important, it was time to bring my design to life with high-fidelity prototyping. Then, testing out the high fidelity prototype yielded several improvements I needed to make.
Earlier sleep times
Users voiced wanting to have a variety of bedtimes to choose from. They have the option to choose a bedtime routine that begins at 8:00pm, and recipes are organized by sleep time.
How users will know their friend has accepted the invitation
Knowing users might invite friends in advance of their evening routine, I created a notification to bridge the gap if the app was closed when the friend accepted.
If users have the app open, the screen to the right will appear.
Seeing friend’s progress
Users can see an image of their friend’s profile picture, which indicates if they are working on that step. It becomes a check mark once the friend completes that step.
Impact of Sleepy Soup
Improved Sleep Hygiene
Sleepy Soup directly addresses the critical issue of poor sleep hygiene by providing actionable steps and social support.
1
2
Enhanced Well-being
By fostering healthier sleep habits, Sleepy Soup contributes to overall well-being and improved quality of life.
Innovative Solution
Sleepy Soup represents a novel approach to sleep improvement, combining social interaction, personalized routines, and accountability in a unique and effective way.