User Research for Est&Co / 01

Highlights

Guided tour:

" The work already makes me exhausted, I hope the home appliances could be more smart to assist my life. Look at my air purifier, once it detects the room is dark, it turns to night mode automatically, so it will not have the noise disturb my sleep."

" I think our consistent night routine and stable living environment really help our sleep quality"

"My bedside lamp makes me feel safe and warm in the sleepless night."

Brainstorming:

Collage:

Participant 1 is explaining his collage

Summary

The below provides a summary of insights developed through primary and secondary research.

-Sleep condition often relates to their mental state.

Users usually feel anxiety irritates sleep quality, and inadequate sleep also aggravate anxiety. Sense of uncertainty and lack of control often overwhelming for the users that lead to the user unable to wind down on the bed, and have difficulty to fall asleep.

-Behaviour reflects mental state, and often be ignored.

Users usually behave differently with different mental state, when under the stressful condition, the user generally hyper-focus on the work at the moment and have very limited intention and energy to perform other activities and change their behaviour. For example, when users have a coming due for assignment, they are less likely to play certain music, switch to certain lighting and spend 15 minutes on meditation. Furthermore, users often have very less awareness of their behaviour change with different mental state.

-Sleep quality oftentimes is the consequence of the user’s prioritisation.

Even though everyone knows the importance of sleep, but sacrifice sleep duration and quality to a certain degree is usually an option for the user. For example, some user believes they have to work or study in a certain way for self-achievement and finance, even though it might sacrifice their sleep quality.

-Increasing expectation and requirement

Some users are expecting a better feeling of sleep, even though they have no sleep difficulties. For example, some users expect to wake more ‘freshly’, and sleep ‘deeper’. Some user’s lifestyle and the job requires higher sleep quality to help them have better recovery, such as users have long working hours and works in a highly competitive environment.

-Effectiveness of products often ambiguous

Some users reported many products and method claimed to promote better sleep often have very limited effect.

Design solution should

- Having the balance between effectiveness and effort

Users have different evaluation of the importance of sleep quality that determines the effort they intend to put. The solution not only fixes the problems but also fits and supports users lifestyle. If the solution requires too much effort that interferes with the user’s primary goal(such as self-achievement), users generally seeking other solutions or living with the problems temporarily.

- Understand user

Users have different requirement and goal for self-relaxation and sleep, the design solution should offer flexibility and functionality that support the user in different scenarios. For example, a large scale of users has different schedule and activities between weekday and weekend, that result in different night routine and sleep goal. The design solution should ‘smart’, that means not only help the user do the work, also knows when it needs works and the appropriate way to work.

- Promote interaction between machine and user

Behaviour change could significantly affect sleep quality and anxiety. However, users lack the awareness to figure out the flexibility of the behaviour. Good interaction could potentially help user forming and strength behaviour that lead to a positive consequence. It is important to note that the way to interact need be well considered to prevent user’s antipathy. This part may work together with the understanding user; effective communication is generally based on understanding.