I’m impressed that the Prof pronounces your first name, if it’s one of the names he knows – it makes his talk feel a lot more personal. And he even knows my name, “Rory”, which is fairly uncommon. How many names did you record? How did you choose those names?
On the home page, the “How it works” three-page widget scrolls too slowly when I click one of the three page circles. That speed is fine for the automatic page-turning every 8 seconds, but if I click a circle, I want to see that page right away – the animation should be about 5 times faster. I was slightly annoyed by the slowness when I tried to go back to the first page, which you don’t want.
It also might help to stop that widget from scrolling until the user has scrolled far down enough that you think they have started reading it, so they can read the first step first, and aren’t forced to click on the first-page circle to go there themselves. Perhaps you don’t care which page the user reads first, but the chronological ordering of the pages contradicts that idea.
When I read https://www.sleepio.com/sciencebehindsleepio, I was impressed that you said you had done experimental trials, and I couldn’t see any sign of obvious bias in the experimental design, but I was still a bit skeptical and worried that the experiments were biased. I just realized that an addition that would have convinced me a lot more strongly would have been a LaTeX-formatted scientific paper about the experiment, typeset in Computer Modern. The paper would not promote Sleepio, but just describe the experimental method and results. I don’t know if LaTeX supports exporting to a web page with the Computer Modern font embedded – if not, you’d have to link to a PDF, which you’d have to work hard to convince me to open.
Thanks for taking the time to look at it and give such thorough feedback.
The name thing is the one thing that always seems to delight people; it's indicative of the care/attention we pay (hopefully) to the user throughout the programme. To arrive at names we started with census records of top baby names going back 50 years, and now periodically add to them with names people enter that we don't have. It degrades gracefully though if we don't know your name!
Noted re: speed of transition. We're adding paddles today too. We decided to keep all animations in synch, but that's a good call on waiting til viewed. We'll look at it.
If we can get permission from the journal we supplying the original paper would be a great idea, although a more accessible format might be better. You can read abstract on pubmed here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22654196
Thanks. Yes we initially had a 7 day trial but are now trying it without. The challenge is how to manage expectations from that trial - you need to stick with the programme to see a positive effect (like a weightloss programme), and despite our explanations mot people expect to see some instant results in that first week. We were hoping the 'Try it now' might give people enough of a taste of what the user experience is...but we'll give it some thought afresh.
Starting with "At what time do you normally get in to bed?" to this Non-24 sufferer living in Germany is sort of like opening with "Enter your ten digit phone number" or "What is your ZIP code?"
The thing we've wrestled most with (and haven't yet cracked) is how to accept time entry in a way that is unambiguous to even the least confident users, and also encompasses the range of quanta we need to manage (from mins to many hours). We've tried a few different solutions but 24hr dropdowns result in the least comprehension errors!!
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.
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!
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 term expensive approach... :)
It took A-G-E-S. Since we have bootstrapped for the last 3 years (only just took some seed money) we don't have the cash to pay our way in like most suppliers. Back then I had already got Prof Espie on board (he and I are the co-Founders) after his techniques had cured my insomnia. Since he is a world-leading expert the Boots Innovation Centre attended one of his seminars, and that prompted the first conversation, whilst we were still at planning stage. But since then it's been a very long road, talking to literally hundreds of people and outlasting team after team of buyers and marketing folk...the only approach with someone like Boots is to build a partnership, but that takes time if you don't have money.
After a lot of iterative development and rigorous clinical testing, we yesterday released Sleepio - an automated, online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) course for poor sleep. Would much appreciate the wise views of HN, positive and negative!
This site is the perfect example of why HTML 5 won't replace flash anytime soon. Because, this site pushes the perks of using Flash to its fullest. Beautiful illustration, excellent animations and simply awesome...Keep it up guys.
I've watched this startup progress from the early customer/problem discovery stage to MVP, validation and beyond. The execution and commitment involved has been an inspiration. Congrats guys. Very impressive.
Hmmm because our primary target (middle aged women) are not that web-savvy i guess, and the .com is the default TLD. We bagged sleep.io when it first went on sale but haven't considered using it as the default.
To ask the opposite (and possibly stupid) question - why would you make sleep.io 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 made the right move getting the .com.
Answered a similar question the other day. Webmaster tools doesn't let you target .io domains globally, as it's intended for the Indian Ocean countries. Therefore it won't rank as well as a .com in the Google serps, which is a big disadvantage.
Well, the techniques are out there in the literature, but it's how they are tailored to your own situation - and more importantly how you actually deliver positive behaviour change, rather than just info - that's the real challenge that we're trying to address at a price less than the £600 you'd need to pay for a course of face to face therapy.
We're going to try a lower price point ongoing subs model to avoid that initial barrier; the assumption initially was that we need to front-load the value, since we're curing people!!
Ha! Top one is the best - not sure how effective that would be in getting anyone to sleep though...
It's a tricky question - there's no solid data on the awareness of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy but it lends credibility to those who do know it. In our (quick and dirty) research it seems that a majority of our main initial target (middle aged women) have heard about it but don't know what it is...
[+] [-] roryokane|13 years ago|reply
On the home page, the “How it works” three-page widget scrolls too slowly when I click one of the three page circles. That speed is fine for the automatic page-turning every 8 seconds, but if I click a circle, I want to see that page right away – the animation should be about 5 times faster. I was slightly annoyed by the slowness when I tried to go back to the first page, which you don’t want.
It also might help to stop that widget from scrolling until the user has scrolled far down enough that you think they have started reading it, so they can read the first step first, and aren’t forced to click on the first-page circle to go there themselves. Perhaps you don’t care which page the user reads first, but the chronological ordering of the pages contradicts that idea.
When I read https://www.sleepio.com/sciencebehindsleepio, I was impressed that you said you had done experimental trials, and I couldn’t see any sign of obvious bias in the experimental design, but I was still a bit skeptical and worried that the experiments were biased. I just realized that an addition that would have convinced me a lot more strongly would have been a LaTeX-formatted scientific paper about the experiment, typeset in Computer Modern. The paper would not promote Sleepio, but just describe the experimental method and results. I don’t know if LaTeX supports exporting to a web page with the Computer Modern font embedded – if not, you’d have to link to a PDF, which you’d have to work hard to convince me to open.
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
The name thing is the one thing that always seems to delight people; it's indicative of the care/attention we pay (hopefully) to the user throughout the programme. To arrive at names we started with census records of top baby names going back 50 years, and now periodically add to them with names people enter that we don't have. It degrades gracefully though if we don't know your name!
Noted re: speed of transition. We're adding paddles today too. We decided to keep all animations in synch, but that's a good call on waiting til viewed. We'll look at it.
If we can get permission from the journal we supplying the original paper would be a great idea, although a more accessible format might be better. You can read abstract on pubmed here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22654196
[+] [-] brackin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
How would you do it if you were us?
[+] [-] SquareWheel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiralganglion|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minikomi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
A limitation of our current media-rich approach however is the cost of adapting content - we took a short term cheap, long term expensive approach... :)
[+] [-] jordn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rshlo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splatzone|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neya|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] JofArnold|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenizer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
To ask the opposite (and possibly stupid) question - why would you make sleep.io the default?
[+] [-] fusiongyro|13 years ago|reply
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 made the right move getting the .com.
[+] [-] highace|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rane|13 years ago|reply
Sounds interesting, but £49.99 is way too much for me right now.
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
We're going to try a lower price point ongoing subs model to avoid that initial barrier; the assumption initially was that we need to front-load the value, since we're curing people!!
[+] [-] moe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply
It's a tricky question - there's no solid data on the awareness of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy but it lends credibility to those who do know it. In our (quick and dirty) research it seems that a majority of our main initial target (middle aged women) have heard about it but don't know what it is...
[+] [-] bpaluzzi|13 years ago|reply
(just in the interest of full disclosure, I'm the lead developer for Sleepio)
[+] [-] pibefision|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phames|13 years ago|reply