Design and development of the SleepWell app and comparison to analog sleep diaries

Abstract

Issues relating to sleep are prevalent worldwide, but few successful attempts have been made in designing and developing mobile applications for sleep assessment. This thesis introduces the design and development of the SleepWell app, a digital sleep diary and sleep deprivation measurement app. The thesis also introduces a mixed-method research study based on action design research where 17 subjects were asked to compare a paper version of Consensus Sleep Diary (CSD-E) to the SleepWell version of CSD-E over a period of two weeks. Also introduced is a second, concurrent study that was performed where 15 subjects used only the digital version for a week. Data was gathered through interviews, surveys, and analytics for app usage.Overall the SleepWell app was regarded positively with almost all participants preferring the digital sleep diary to paper sleep diaries. The app mostly met or exceeded expectations of user experience. Some problems were found, and various improvements need to be made to the app. From this study, five guidelines for designing self-reporting and self-monitoring apps were derived. We propose that in the future, the SleepWell app, if clinically validated, replace paper sleep diaries as a standard tool of sleep assessment.