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Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software.

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Re: Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software.

#61

Post by phames »

madcap wrote: post #60
phames wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but I actually think we need to be even clearer. It should be obvious what to do without reading anything. And if high-functioning HN users are making that error, your average Boots customer almost certainly is. Unfortunately there isn't an obvious affordance for this sort of interaction (that I've yet come across) - it looks like an email signup, when in fact it's more like 'play a game'...an interesting cha…

I'm just thinking out loud here. One approach is to replace the green Try It Now button with an image of the Prof, under which you say "Hi. I'm the Prof. What's your name?", following by text field and green button. Then experiment with what the green button says. It would be interesting to see if a vague 'what's your name' approach, rather than a specific direction with a stated outcome, wins in a split-test.

Nice idea - we would need to connect the headline explaining the programme with the Prof more clearly, but that's pretty easy. Will work it up, thanks!

Re: Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software.

#64

Post by phames »

Thanks for all the constructive comments guys.

For those of you who would like to try Sleepio, we've set up a discount code for the first 100 to use it: HN-STOLE-MY-SLEEP will give you 30% off.

Thanks for all the feedback, and look forward to any more you've got!

Re: Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software.

#66

Post by spiralganglion »

I'm currently working on a similar service for training workers in the heavy industries (oil, forestry, mining, etc). Flash based first, HTML5 next. A site design that feels more like an environment than a web page, led by interactions with a virtual character.

It is hugely inspiring to see that you've just nailed this sort of seamless and beautiful experience. I'm going to sign up for a course just so I can see how you've handled the various design challenges inherent to such a service. We've got our own exciting plans, but I'd love to learn from your example.

Also, I've got one nagging question I'd love your answer to. We've got a bunch of artists in-house, but don't have much in the way of great tools for animation. What tools did you use to do the animations on the Prof and the backgrounds? (Love the moustache mountain!) I'd be surprised if that was done with Flash keyframes, as I find them to be painfully slow to work with.

Thanks for releasing this here on HN. I hope you have a great launch. I'll be sharing your service with my team, and my friends, many of whom are frustrated night owls looking for better morning time.

Re: Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software.

#68

Post by thalur »

phames wrote: post #26
minikomi wrote: post #23

Wow.. The "Program" model seems like it would work for a lot of things - diets, exercise, study... Thought about making it a platform?

Yes that's the vision! That when you have a problem, you just 'visit The Prof', and he gives you a blended programme to help you. Sleep is a good starting point, since it is a) socially acceptable to talk about, and b) is highly co-morbid with other problems - a good way in to health in general. A limitation of our current media-rich approach however is the cost of adapting content - we took a short term cheap, long…

To me, the obvious follow-up would be social anxiety because it is intrinsically hard to talk to other people about, yet discussing it with a computer doesn't pose any difficulty. (I'm currently reading a 'use CBT to cure social anxiety' book which has been rather eye-opening.)

Regardless, I like the site, though it sometimes gets a bit choppy on my old macbook pro. I think £50 might be a bit steep as an up-front cost - it almost put me off.

Also, have you considered doing an iphone app for the diary? I use some supposedly motion sensing app to wake me up with music. It doesn't work very well, but for your purposes I could easily see just thumping the phone when I notice I'm awake instead of having to look at a clock and remember a time.

Re: Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software.

#69

Post by phames »

fusiongyro wrote: post #58
tokenizer wrote: post #25

Why wouldn't you use sleep.io as the default?

Somebody was in the news the other day because their clever country-code TLD was taken away by the registry. All of the country code TLDs have weird restrictions with which you can easily fail to comply. Recourse for smaller registries can be harder to obtain. In this case I'm not sure why they went with 'sleepio' if they weren't going to use '.io' other than perhaps it's trendy right now, but I think they probably m…

We decided 'Sleepio' way before .io domains were available!

Re: Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software.

#70

Post by phames »

spiralganglion wrote: post #66

I'm currently working on a similar service for training workers in the heavy industries (oil, forestry, mining, etc). Flash based first, HTML5 next. A site design that feels more like an environment than a web page, led by interactions with a virtual character. It is hugely inspiring to see that you've just nailed this sort of seamless and beautiful experience. I'm going to sign up for a course just so I can see how…

Thanks so much! Sounds fascinating - what's your service called? Would love to see how you've approached that challenge - I know for us it took a lot of iterations!
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