SleepFit: A Persuasive Mobile App for Improving Sleep Habits in Young Adults

Abstract

Sleep disorders have been associated with mental distress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety. Digital interventions using mobile technology can address sleep difficulties due to the pervasiveness of smartphones, especially among young adults. Therefore, we design a persuasive mobile app, called SleepFit, targeted at young adults with the aim of improving their sleep habits or behaviours which in turn would improve their mental health and wellbeing. To achieve this, we employ the user-centered design approach in five stages. First, we elicit user preferences by conducting two concurrent focus group (FG) sessions to understand participants' current sleep habits, contributing factors, and how a persuasive mobile app (such as SleepFit) can help to improve their situation. Second, we design low-fidelity prototypes (LFP) illustrating various features of SleepFit based on our findings from the FG sessions after data analysis. Third, we conduct a user study to assess perceived persuasiveness of the features illustrated by the LFP. Our findings show that users perceived 7 features (Sleep Analysis, News Feed, Smart Alarm, Chat, Sleep Music, Notification, and Sleep Diary) as significantly persuasive for improving their sleep habits. Fourth, we design high-fidelity prototypes which reflect only the features that are perceived as significantly persuasive, based on the results of the LFP evaluation. Finally, we conduct a usability evaluation of the high-fidelity prototypes (HFP) and then refine the HFP based on qualitative feedback after thematic analysis.