Role
Sole UX Designer
Key Skills: Primary Research, Secondary Research, User Personas, User Stories, Sketches, Usability Testing, Wireframing, High Fidelity Mockups
Project Duration: 2 Months
What is Yume?
Yume is an application that tracks sleep habits to help people take control over their sleep health. 70% of Americans report poor sleep at least one night a month. Poor sleep can interfere with relationships, work performance, and levels of stress. With Yume, users are able to track trends, create a sleep journal entry, and set goals to help them feel like the best version of themselves.
Project Goal
The goal of Yume is to create an experience that encourages those suffering from poor sleep quality to make adjustments to their sleep habits. Research revealed people struggle with dealing with stress, falling asleep, and turning off their brain.
Secondary Research
I wanted to dive deeper into this subject to see what people experience in regards to sleep quality. I discovered that many Americans suffer from poor sleep quality and that there are many contributing factors, such as stress, environment, work/life balance, etc.
Survey and User Interviews
Using Google Forms, I created a survey to gauge the amount of people suffering from poor sleep quality. After analyzing the results, I reached out to potential candidates for user interviews. Five people were selected for interviews so that I could gain a better understanding of their lives and current sleep habits.
Affinity Map
I wrote down key insights from the interviews onto sticky notes and created an affinity map to determine the groups that would drive my solution. This helped me see how common certain pain points were among the interviewees.
Empathy Maps and Personas
I created three empathy maps based off of the user interviews. This helped me get into the mindset of those suffering from sleep issues and what they would need to solve them. From the empathy maps, I created three personas to further solidify who I was designing for.
User Stories
Generating user stories allowed me to understand the path that a user would take when using Yume. I separated the stories into ones that would be crucial to using the app and ones that could be added on in the future.
User Flows
Based on the user stories, I mapped out 3 MVP routes for users to take for the app.
Sketches
With the MVP routes mapped out, I began sketching these routes to bring the design to life. I would use these sketches to conduct my first user tests.
User Testing
I conducted 5 remote user tests to uncover areas of opportunity for the design. Some of these areas included:
Wireframes
After user testing a reviewing my initial sketches, I created wireframes that better suited the needs of potential users.
Mood Board
Before jumping into high fidelity mockups, I created a mood board with colors and images that embodied the essence of what Yume is about—Encouraging people to create healthier sleep habits so they can feel like the best version of themselves
High Fidelity Mockups
To create these high fidelity mockups, I referred to my personas, mood board, and brand personality to ensure I was designing for the user and not myself.
Usability Testing Round 2
Five remote moderated usability tests were conducted to test out the flow and ease of use of the design. Users were given four tasks:
From the tests, three main insights were revealed. Users had confusion when it came to:
Proposed Changes
Making these changes to the design eliminates user confusion for a more seamless experience.
Usability Testing Round 3
After making changes to my initial design, I conducted 5 more remote usability tests. These tests allowed me to gain more insight into other people’s experiences. For example, one user wanted more control over password character length and birthday input because he had been a victim of identity theft. Users also expressed wanting a way to know when a day was completed to remove any guesswork.
Reiterated Design
After taking all feedback into consideration, I made tweaks to the high fidelity mockups to better represent user needs. This included:
Lessons Learned
Throughout the UX Design process, I discovered three main takeaways:
