Project Overview
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Role and Duration
ROLE: Visual Designer, Interaction Designer, UX Researcher
DURATION: February 2023 (1 Month)
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Project Vision
The vision goal of the app is to ensure that every traveler can rest easy on their journey, knowing they'll never miss their intended stop again. I envisioned a future where the fear of falling asleep during transit is replaced with confidence and convenience. It will track passengers' progress and recognize when they are approaching their destination and will gently awaken them, ensuring they disembark at the right stop every time.
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Project Goals
1. Develop a dependable stop alert system that accurately identifies a commuter's location and destination, ensuring that users are woken up in a timely manner to disembark at the correct stop, even if they've fallen asleep.
2. Create an intuitive and user-friendly interface that caters to a wide range of commuters, regardless of age or tech-savviness.
3. Ensure the app is compatible with various mobile platforms and can integrate with different transportation providers and systems, offering commuters a versatile solution that works seamlessly across their preferred devices and services.
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Key Questions
1. What user preferences should the app accommodate?
2. How can we ensure that the app remains user-friendly while accommodating these preferences?
3. What measures will ensure reliability and safety?
Research
Research findings indicate that a significant number of commuters experience the challenge of falling asleep during their train or bus journeys, often attributed to sleep apnea complications or chronic sleep deprivation. This issue highlights a critical need for innovative solutions that address both the well-being and efficiency of daily transit. Understanding the underlying causes and factors contributing to commuter fatigue is essential for developing an app or system that can effectively assist individuals in awaking up and ensuring they disembark at the correct stop. By acknowledging the prevalence of sleep-related issues among commuters, we can design interventions that not only enhance the daily travel experience but also promote healthier sleep habits and overall well-being for those navigating busy urban environments.
Persona 1
Michael is a sous-chef living in New York. He works very hard at his restaurant, and often works much earlier and later than his scheduled shifts. He’s had sleep apnea since he was 35 years old. Because of his condition and his long work schedules, he is prone to falling asleep during his commute. His solution to his problem has been to leave earlier so that he his able to catch another train if he misses his stop. Doing this cuts even more into his sleep time. He needs a better solution so that he his able to get more sleep and able to get off at the correct stop.
Persona 2
Dawn is a retail store manager from Houston. She tries to keep an appopriate work-life balance, but she often ends up staying up into the late hours of the night. She loves to binge her favorite shows, and she often loses track of time. Because of this, she often falls asleep on the bus during her commute to work and misses her stop. She needs assistance gauging how much time she should spending watching shows before she needs to be in bed.
Journey Maps and Story Boards
I then created a journey map and a storyboard for the persona for best fit both situations.
Wireframes
After meticulously crafting my journey map and storyboard, I proceeded to create wireframes. These wireframes served as the visual blueprint, translating my conceptual ideas into a tangible and structured design for the project. The two main features of the app include a feature that tell you when your bedtime should be according to the time you must be at your bus/train stop. This will ensure you get your recommended 8 hours of sleep. For the other feature, you enter the location of your destination and set the radius you would like to be within for your alarm to sound off. Once you are within that radius, your alarm will sound, waking you up if you happen to sleep during your commute.
Prototype
After completing the wireframing stage, I moved on to creating mockups, refining the visual elements, and enhancing accessibility features for my prototype. These mockups added the finer details and ensured that the design was not only aesthetically pleasing but also user-friendly.
Accessibility
Accessibility lies at the core of my app's design philosophy. Users can tailor alarm settings to suit their individual needs, providing a personalized experience. Moreover, the ability to set recurring alarms ensures that commuters can rely on the app to help them stay awake and alert during their journeys, offering a valuable and inclusive solution for a diverse range of users.
Takeaways and Next Steps
I strongly believe that this app has the potential to be incredibly beneficial to individuals dealing with sleep ailments and those who accidentally fall asleep during their commutes. To enhance its usability, my next steps involve delving deeper into user settings, making the recurring alarm feature highly customizable, and tailoring it to individual preferences. Additionally, I plan to incorporate features that assist those who struggle to fall asleep at night, such as a variety of white noise sounds, meditation exercises, and other relaxation techniques. These enhancements aim to create a comprehensive sleep support platform that caters to a wide range of sleep-related needs, ultimately improving the quality of life for users facing sleep challenges.