Sleep Diaries

Our team worked with sleep researchers during an academic study-abroad project in Newcastle. The brief was to redesign a survey for older adults, preserving subjective reporting after waking and before bed while reconsidering how each question is presented on a phone.

Academic readings, older-adult interface guidance and comparison with Consensus Sleep Diary informed the work. Paper forms place questions beside repeated date columns. We explored a guided sequence with clearer controls and fewer competing decisions on each screen. Accessibility was a design objective, not a measured outcome.

Morning Diary asks about the previous night. Evening Diary asks about the day before going to bed. The flow map connects these sequences to a shared home, instructions, past entries and settings, while distinguishing participant actions from researcher-controlled study rules.

The structure includes 13 morning question groups and five evening question groups, with conditional follow-ups. These are interface counts, not research-participant metrics. The proposed report-release cycle belongs to the product model, not a longitudinal study completed by our team.

The team evaluated the prototype through peer interviews, usability sessions and feedback from the sleep-research collaborators. The authored account describes participants simulating older-adult needs. Participant composition and counts are incompletely documented, so this is not presented as testing with verified older adults.

Feedback informed time input, text and icon clarity, navigation and entry locking. We explored explicit increment controls in place of the reference clock picker, making hours, minutes and AM/PM visible together. The comparison shows a design decision, not a measured improvement in task performance.

The authored account also records removing the day/night toggle. Morning and evening instead appear as distinct entry actions. No recovered image establishes the earlier toggle state, so that change is described rather than reconstructed.

Time, duration, selected answers and conditional details share a consistent question structure. The progress indicator keeps the current group visible, while Back and Next remain in predictable positions. Explore selected recorded states from each journey below; these are evidence views, not a functioning sleep diary.

The home makes entry availability explicit: morning first, evening next, then both complete. These states express the intended reporting sequence. Labels and completion feedback accompany color, rather than leaving the distinction to orange and blue alone.

Past Entries groups morning and evening records by date, including unavailable entries. The intended review is read-only. The prototype communicates that structure, but does not establish saved records, functioning historical detail or improved reporting adherence.

The documented palette pairs coral and amber with two blues. Cloud forms, moon imagery and the notebook mark connect the identity to the diary without changing the underlying question structure. Livvic, Futura and Inter appear in the product artwork; the portfolio keeps its own typography.

The presentation records the project colors as #DD7F5A, #A1C5E7, #61A1D7 and #F0A963. Repeated navigation, progress and increment controls connect the screens. The system expresses an accessibility intention, not formal compliance or validated assistive features.

The silent walkthrough demonstrates selected screens and state changes. Playback is intentional here. The Figma prototype opens separately at its authored starting point; neither presentation implies a working clinical application, report engine or data service.

In 2025, our team produced a high-fidelity mobile prototype connecting daily survey questions, visible progress, entry availability and review. That academic deliverable demonstrated the reporting model; it did not implement data storage or clinical reporting.

At the final presentation, Night Mode, additional accessibility implementation, Final Report interactivity and post-study homepage changes were identified as future work. The proposed 15-day cycle was product intent, not a completed longitudinal study. Validation with the intended population and longitudinal evaluation were not established by our academic project; clinical deployment was outside its scope.

Our 2025 student prototype continued beyond the Digital Civics Exchange. Circadia Lab, Northumbria University, developed the design into a publicly available sleep-research application, with development led by Lucas França and Mario Leocadio-Miguel.

Circadia’s release and the live application credit Bri Baehl, Jacob Howard, Frederic Kussow and Yuliana Luna Colón for the design. Our contribution was the original UX, interface design and prototype, distinct from Circadia’s production implementation.

The current application supports morning and evening diaries, derived sleep metrics, local data storage and CSV/JSON export, with an open-source codebase. These are capabilities of the later Circadia application, not implemented features of the 2025 prototype. Its interface and feature set have continued to evolve.

Translating a research survey is not just a visual simplification. Timing, sequence and the meaning of an answer must survive the move to a small screen. Our team’s work brought repeated morning and evening actions into one model, using consistent controls and visible state to reconcile research requirements with interaction clarity.

Design team: Bri Baehl, Jacob Howard, Frederic Kussow and Yuliana Luna Colón.

Research collaborators: Lucas França and Mario Leocadio-Miguel. Academic guidance: Austin Toombs, Colin Gray and Paul Parsons.

Presented May 23, 2025, during the Newcastle study-abroad project. Team activities are credited collectively; individual responsibilities are not itemized in the source documentation.