Good Sleeper - mobile app and digital cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) digital service and mobile app design, digital therapy transformation and reframing for artificial human-interface interaction
2021-2022
2021-2022
The challenge:
The goal of this project was to design and reinvent a digital service for insomnia patients. The project was focused on designing digital therapy from scratch and restructuring the experience of the 6-week cognitive-behavioural therapy program conducted face-to-face with a psychiatrist into an easy-to-use and engaging mobile application.
Key issues:
1) PATIENT-THERAPIST PHENOMENON: How to digitally transform the phenomenon of the patient-therapist relationship and the psychiatrist's flexible responsiveness into an automated, personalized mobile application?
2) COGNITIVE OVERLOAD: How to structure a digital program into a series of simple and engaging tasks that will be understandable to users and will not cause cognitive overload?
1) PATIENT-THERAPIST PHENOMENON: How to digitally transform the phenomenon of the patient-therapist relationship and the psychiatrist's flexible responsiveness into an automated, personalized mobile application?
2) COGNITIVE OVERLOAD: How to structure a digital program into a series of simple and engaging tasks that will be understandable to users and will not cause cognitive overload?
3) PERSONAL MOTIVATION DROPS: How to ensure personalization and flexibility for each user and stay ahead of potential frustrations and drops in engagement?
The core problems definition:
1) How might we redesign the experience of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia during face-to-face meetings in the office with a qualified psychiatrist into structured digital service so that people suffering from insomnia could easily engage in treatment with a mobile application and achieve a clear improvement related to their health?
2) How might we deliver to people with insomnia, who are looking for help on the internet and often end up taking strong sleeping pills the best possible digital experience based on CBT-I (the most efficient treatment method for insomnia) so that they can easily get into therapy and stick to daily tasks until they see a noticeable improvement in their sleeping and daily life quality.
1) How might we redesign the experience of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia during face-to-face meetings in the office with a qualified psychiatrist into structured digital service so that people suffering from insomnia could easily engage in treatment with a mobile application and achieve a clear improvement related to their health?
2) How might we deliver to people with insomnia, who are looking for help on the internet and often end up taking strong sleeping pills the best possible digital experience based on CBT-I (the most efficient treatment method for insomnia) so that they can easily get into therapy and stick to daily tasks until they see a noticeable improvement in their sleeping and daily life quality.
My Role:
Chief Service Designer, Product Owner and Product Management Consultant for Good Sleeper, the first polish digital health CBT-I therapy, the mobile application for insomnia, delivering 51% reduction in time to fall asleep, 66% less waking up during the night, 70% less use of medication drugs
Team Players:
Chief Medical Officer and Co-owner - A key collaborator with whom I conducted dozens of hours of interviews about the experience of therapy and testing design elements of the service
UX and UI Designers - Key collaborators responsible for the preparation of hi-fi designs of all application screens, with whom I spent dozens of hours on the joint design process
Key in-house developer - A key collaborator and technical analyst, with whom we kept specifying the operation of individual elements of the service in sprints
Business Owner / CEO - The main stakeholder with whom I cooperated in designing the business and product strategy with investors
Product Owner - A person who described the operation of mock-ups and helped with workshops, as well as operational and marketing issues
Product Manager - A person who kept an eye on the schedule and managed the work of developers
Product Owner - A person who described the operation of mock-ups and helped with workshops, as well as operational and marketing issues
Product Manager - A person who kept an eye on the schedule and managed the work of developers
Methods:
Behaviour Data Analysis
Interviews
Behaviour Data Analysis
Interviews
Jobs to be done
Personas
Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Journey Maps
Service Blueprint
Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Journey Maps
Service Blueprint
Choice Architecture
Service Framing
UX Strategy
Wireframes
Wireframes
My responsibilities and participation:
My role during this project was as Senior Service Designer, Business/Product Consultant and UX Researcher. My first central task was to acquire deep knowledge about the course of therapy in natural conditions, its main assumptions, exercises and tools, as well as the specificity of the relationship that takes place between the patient and the professional.
My role during this project was as Senior Service Designer, Business/Product Consultant and UX Researcher. My first central task was to acquire deep knowledge about the course of therapy in natural conditions, its main assumptions, exercises and tools, as well as the specificity of the relationship that takes place between the patient and the professional.
The challenge was to translate the phenomenology of the language of therapy into a repeatable and understandable interactive architecture. The enormity of therapeutic material, extensive knowledge of beliefs about the nature of sleep that need to be communicated to users and the need to adhere to the protocol required a structure that would be accessible, understandable and light in the conditions of a mobile application.
The key was to diversify the levels of experience and refer to mental models known, for example, from textbooks for language learning and applications for changing habits.
The application became the user's daily assistant in performing daily minor tasks and exercises and provided weekly therapy sessions focused on his specific insomnia problems.
Design process:
I was fully responsible for the following stages of the project:
Creation of Service Design workshops with Customer Journey Mapping
Stakeholders Intrerview
Business and Value Propositions
Literature Review
Competitive Analysis
UX Audit
Customer Journey Mapping
Service Blueprint in detail
User Stories
Information Architecture
Key app tools and features design
Wireframing and prototyping
UX / UI Strategy
Brand positioning and design system strategy
I was involved in the following stages of the project:
UX/UI hi-fi mobile design
Content design
Scoping for development
Implementation
UX optimization after implementation
Selected stages of the design process:
UX Audit / Expert Review
I conducted an expert review of the current desktop service in order to identify the challenges of translating complex therapeutic knowledge directly into multiple slides of cognitive-behavioural theory without clearly guiding the user through the information hierarchy and useful chunks of knowledge that can be consumed.
Literature Review
Literature Review
To better understand the challenges of digital therapy without the most important success factor - the bond with a real therapist, a critical literature analysis was conducted. I also deepened my psychological knowledge in the field of choice architecture and design for behaviour change.
Competitive Analysis
I conducted an in-depth competition analysis in the field of digital applications for insomnia, as well as other services positioned to help with better sleep and habits change, including Sleepio, Stellar Sleep, Aura, Calm, CBT-I Coach, Night Owl, Restful, Habitify, Habit Tracker, Everyday, Coach me and Loop.
Stakeholders Interviews, UX Research
I designed and conducted workshops and interviews with practitioners of the method, the owner, who was a patient in the past, and I analyzed Voice of Customer in insomnia groups in social media.
Service Blueprint and Customer Journey Mapping
Key mapping of the layers of experience during therapy, structuring the program into a daily part with an individual plan to perform, weekly progress and a weekly therapeutic session consisting of nine fixed elements.
Key mapping of the layers of experience during therapy, structuring the program into a daily part with an individual plan to perform, weekly progress and a weekly therapeutic session consisting of nine fixed elements.
Designing onboarding, aha moments, customer journeys, engagement tools, daily habits builder flows, therapy session flows and chunks.
Impact:
Digital app for iOS and Android launched in October 2022 on Polish market and is now in translation into other markets. 10 000+ sales in the first three weeks from launch.
Digital app for iOS and Android launched in October 2022 on Polish market and is now in translation into other markets. 10 000+ sales in the first three weeks from launch.
Medonet - the largest medical customer portal in Poland joins as a strategic partner of Good Sleeper.
My Take Aways / Key Learnings:
All stakeholders bring many brilliant perspectives, often people least connected to the front of the product have a lot of accurate and fresh observations and ideas.
Frameworks and experience structuring are the most useful tools for designing meaningful stories, pacing them and a friendly plan that allows you to continue and control amazing and complicated narratives.
Computer-human interaction in the context of intimate and health matters brings many opportunities for interaction that are difficult in the patient-doctor contact, but at the same time it is a challenge at those points of contact where the personal relationship is supportive and healing.
