of my sleep status. And it is quite fun to use”. Also,
the simplicity in interaction to fill in the diary was
mentioned by participants.
Unpleasant
During the exit interview most of the participants
complained about the size of the slots in the timeline
they had to fill in. For example, one participant
mentioned he felt he had a fat finger, because he could
not precisely select the correct time slot without
zooming: ”…like I said, the feeling of having a fat
finger that encroaches on other things, that was the
only real frustration that I had with it...”. Other
participants complained that they felt under pressure
to fill in the sleep diary “…because I must record, so
it is a pressure on me…” and that it is hard to
remember to fill in the sleep diary on time.
Improvements
Participants suggested that offering a better overview
of their data that would include meaningful
visualisations and patterns would be desirable.
Participants also mentioned that they would like to be
able to add comments on the data they filled in, e.g.,
to note reasons on why they woke up at night:
“…maybe when you wake up at night, that you can
indicate why…”, or what was the reason for which
they needed to take a nap in the afternoon. Some
participants also noted that zooming and scrolling on
the timeline was difficult. A few participants
mentioned the wish of being able to see more diaries
on one page. This way a pattern of their sleep
behaviour could be better observed. Other
improvements suggested by participants are:
reminders, recording mood of the day, recording
objective data such as location of sleep, snooze events
as well as self-reported information like the
description of dreams.
6 CONCLUSIONS
Hypnos is a graphical digital diary that allows to
report easily sleep data traditionally captured in paper
diaries. Its design emphasizes simplicity and supports
an overview of sleep data that can be useful to
clinicians as well to researchers.
The results of the quantitative assessment were not
unexpected. The usability of the app was evaluated
positively. The user experience evaluation found
positive scores with regards to pragmatic aspects of
the user experience (perspicuity and usefulness), but
showed that the device could be made more engaging
and innovative. This enforces that the next steps
needed to be taken in the following iterations of
Hypnos should be in the Stimulation and Novelty
dimensions defined by the UEQ questionnaire. The
qualitative assessment results identified several
usability and user experience issues that need more
consideration. By addressing them, we can only
expect that usability and user experience will
improve.
For these reasons, Hypnos would need another
iteration for addressing the identified issues, and
conduct a final usability and user experience with
both clinicians and patients before positioning it as a
clinical tool.
In terms of study limitations, we are aware of the fact
that the participants recruited were on average
younger than our potential target population, highly
educated and healthy. Being in a highly educated
young age segment of the population, it is more likely
that they are digital native, proficient with tablets and
smartphones, and learn quicker than seniors.
Both clinical practice and research need such a tool
for multiple reasons. It is clear that digital sleep
diaries have advantages over traditional pen and
paper diaries such as: data input validation, collecting
quality data, higher adherence, safe storage and a
better user experience. Both clinicians and patients
would benefit of such advantages, with the end result
of a better treatment. Researchers by potentially
having access to big data collected through time can
conduct higher quality research and process data
easier. Therefore, based on this study, the authors
propose to run another development iteration of
Hypnos that will improve the usability and enhance
user experience of the app which will further be tested
and validated.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was performed within the Eindhoven
MedTech Innovation Center (e/MTIC, a
collaboration between Kempenhaege Center for
Sleep Medicine, Eindhoven University of
Technology, and Philips Research). Development
and evaluation of the sleep diary was done within the
project: HealthBed: Unobtrusive monitoring of
health-related parameters in the bed environment,
funded by a EIT Health grant (no. 17092).
REFERENCES
Akerstedt, T., Hume, K., Minors, D., Waterhouse, J., 1994,
The Subjective Meaning of Good Sleep, An
Intraindividual Approach Using the Karolinska Sleep
Subjective Sleep Quality Monitoring with the Hypnos Digital Sleep Diary: Evaluation of Usability and User Experience
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