Dream Maker Journal

DREAM

• MAKER

OVERVIEW

Dream maker app is a dream journal alarm clock that also tracks your sleep quality. The alarm clock wakes users & prompts them to voice record a description of their dream. Users can store & review these dream profiles to see what themes they hold. Also included is a social media feed & a map that generally indicates the type of dreams others who are currently using the app are having. This app aims to guide users in developing deeper self-awareness, a sense of personal narrative & help to improve the quality of their sleep.

Role

UX/UI Designer
UX Researcher
App Design
Icon Design

Tools

Figma
Photoshop
Maze

Time Span

year 2021
4 Weeks

01 •

RESEARCH

User Interviews.

I interviewed 8 participants with the goal of understanding their sleep patterns & what their relationship is with dreams. My focus was to identify what the key aspects are that would make recording dreams an easy, insightful & fun experience.

/// Research 001 /// user interviews /// competitor analyses

Motivation

(When & Why?)

• To improve their ability to recall & control their dreams (stop nightmares / identify nightmare triggers).

• Share their dreams while seeing what friends & others are also dreaming about.
‍
• To record their dreams/sleep to see if any interesting patterns emerge.

User Pains

(Why not?)

• If app is high maintenance & doesn't easily fit into daily routines.

• Having to answer too many questions or write too much while sleepy & groggy in the morning.

• Having no privacy & accidentally overshare embarrassing dream details.

Primary Goals

(List of goals)

1. Enhance sleep quality.
2. Improve their mood.
3. Enhance self-awareness.
4. Discover dream messages.
5. Keep in touch with friends
6. Voice recording & transcription.
7. Easy to use.
8. Privacy.

Competitor Summary

There are many sleep & dream monitoring apps but few of them are geared towards recording both dreams & quality of sleep together at once. I aim to make Dream Maker unique by emphasizes both the quality of sleep & the contents of the dreams.

Many of the current Dream journal apps available focus on training user’s to Lucid dream which I feel may be too alienating for the majority of users who aren’t interested in doing this.

02 •

Synthesize

Insights from Research

I establish the essential design goals & key features based on the research data gathered from my interviews & competitor analyses. These will become my focus points when planning the designs for this project.

/// synthesize 002 /// key features /// User needs /// user motivations /// user Pains

• Key Features •

Needs

• Document & tag dreams.
• Bedtime & morning alarm.
• Dream journal archive that is easy to browse.
• Anonymously share dreams on social media.
• Share dream entries with friends.
• Stats on the user's dreams & sleep quality.
• Voice recording & transcription when creating journal entry.

Motivation

• Improve self awareness.
• Improve sleep quality & health.
• Discover dream patterns & similarities with friends & others around you.
• Journal keeps old memories & feelings.

PAINS

• Too cumbersome.
• Hard to remember dreams.
• Too many steps in creating journal entry.
• A bright screen will keep Users awake.

03 •

IDEATE

Acquiring & Structuring Data

I conducted a card sorting test on 8 participants to determine what the optimal dream categories are for the many subcategories of dream themes, places, characters, animals, people, actions & emotions should be. These categories will be used to tag & define dream journal entries. Then based on my above key features list I created a site map & user task flow.

/// ideate 003 /// card sorting /// site map /// user task flow

Card sorting results

Dendogram analyses

I analyzed the results through a Dendogram that was based on the best merged method. The best merge method makes assumptions about larger clusters based on individual card pair relationships.

Some card categories were merged which helps in developing a simplified color-coded tagging system for the varying types of dream elements.
This chart shows how the many card categories where merged together.

Predicting the Flow

user Task Flow chart

Starting from the Home screen I created a User Task FlowChart that illustrates the various navigation paths a user may take to post a dream journal on social media. It was important to define & clarify the many task flows users can take to create & post their dream journal entries.

04 •

UI Design

Generating Sketches & Prototype

Based on my mood board I roughly hand sketched some ideas which then led to my initial wireframes. After finalizing my sketches I then created a prototype with the task flow of setting an alarm & then creating a dream journal entry after the alarm goes off. The final task then requires the user to post their dream journal entry onto the app's social media.

/// ui design 004 /// hand sketch /// Hi-fi sketch /// prototype /// style tile

Hand Drawn Sketches

Brainstorming Ideas

I roughly sketched out ideas for the main home & journal screens. I wanted to define the art direction for these screens & evoke the same feelings of surrealism/mysticism from the research images that I collected. I wanted this app to be visually stimulating & fun for user’s to both see & interact with.

Style Tile

Logo, Typography, Color palette

I wanted the logo to embody the visual elements & themes that recur through-out my app. I used one of my oblong shapes in combination with a clock face & a picture of the moon. I felt the combination of these elements convey at a glance what the theme of the app is & informs the user that it has an alarm clock feature as well.

05 •

testing

Testing small groups first

I started my testing with smaller groups of people & I found some usability issues. I identified these issues & made corrections. After making those corrections I then tested my prototype on a larger group of 10 people with a 100% completion rate. Below are the main redesign challenges that I encountered.

/// testing 005 /// testing groups /// interactive prototype /// fINAL SCreens /// Conclusion

• Test Results •

• Final Screens •

Journal Entries

The user is able to voice transcribe a description of their dream as a journal entry.

The app automatically creates tags that pluck out descriptive words from the journal entry & color codes them based on what dream element category those words fall under.
The user's moods can also be added as tags to quickly convey what the user was feeling during their dream.

The journal entry can then be shared on the app's social media with the option to post anonymously.

Social Media

Dream Maker features a social media feed where users can see & share dream posts with friends. Users can also view dream posts from others that are nearby. Nearby posts are kept anonymous to protect all user's privacy.

The map feature shows what dream themes are trending in the user's area. The user can also view if anyone else is having dreams similar to their own.

All User's are kept anonymous within the map feature.

Dream & Sleep Stats

This feature shows charts that measure the User's stats within varying time frames (week, month, year, all).

The User can see charts & percentages that show which of their dream theme tags have recurred the most. The number of sleep hours they had, the quality of that sleep & the frequency of how often they referenced specific mood tags in their dreams are also displayed.

Conclusion

This has been the most challenging project for me so far both in terms of visual design & in creating systems for organizing the various types of sleep/dream information. I loved experimenting with different motifs & playing with the glowing highlight effects to give my UI elements an astral-projection theme. Once I have more time to commit to this project I will also add daytime journal screens for user’s to reference & compare with their dream journal counterparts.

For my next projects I will work on making my low-fi screens less detailed so that I can focus more on the information architecture of the app.
I lost an unnecessary amount of time in revising the Top-Nav buttons & functions throughout the entire project. I feel this could have been avoided if I specified these functions earlier in the project. The journal screens were especially challenging since I needed to offer intuitive options for tagging, navigating & searching through the journal archive/catalogue.

Over all dreams as a topic is very fascinating & has been a great source of creative inspiration that kept me driven throughout this project. I hope to work on more creative projects like this in the future.

• Final Screens •

Conclusion

Let's work together!