Dreams can affect one's mood, especially when the feelings and the visuals experienced are strong. Dreams also affect the energy and productivity of one self.

However, dreams can be obscure and hard to understand.

What if you can record and interpret your dreams as a means of self-reflection, while tracking mood changes and connecting to interpret your dream experience to your daily waking self?

Research - Scientific Studies & Technologies

Dreams also reflect one's interests and personality, as well as fears and anxieties. [1] Dreams also affect one’s mental and physical health [2][3], while people who remember their dreams often shows higher level of creativity.[4] On the other hand, nightmares can cause sleep problems and affects mood during waking period.[5]

To understand dreams further, we need to know what part of the brain dreams.

Along with remembering and imagination, the hippocampus is responsible for dreaming. [6][7] On top of that, the amygdala also plays a role in dreaming - especially during intense emotions such as fear. [8]

Scientist and researches uses Electrocephalogram (EEG) to record and understand brain activities. It is non-invasive method and usually is used to evaluate your brain. [9]Nowadays, there are wearable EEG devices for commercial use.

User Research

Dreams associate strongly with user’s moods even though they may not remember the dream entirely. Dreams can be a form of self-reflection and understanding your thought pattern.

Out of 19 people that responded, some insights that I concluded:

I conducted a short user survey to understand users’ dream memorization and how tracking dreams can help them.

71.4% users remember the feeling and the visuals of their dream, while 78.6% users remember the feeling of fear and anxiety of their nightmares.

By recording dreams, 53.8% of users would like to understand their dreams, while the others would like to use to record as self reflection and gain perspective.

For 85.7% of users, dreams affect their mood throughout their day.

Most users feel like they rarely dream, and only remember them sometimes.

User Persona & Storyboards

Based on these insights, I crafted 3 User Personas as guide to develop my product.

Yona's Story

Darwin's Story

Joyce's Story

Feature Ideation & Value Proposition

As I've defined the problem and needs of my users, I use "Like, Wish, and What Ifs" to list ideas and potential features that can help them.

To determine which ideas I prioritize, I create sections of impact and complexity. Ideas that fall on high impact as solutions to the problem and least complexity in terms of feasibility and technology are carried over to testing.

Context & Assumption

To create a user flow, some context and assumptions are laid out due to time constraints.
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Users have created an account and has gone through on-boarding process (On-boarding user flow can be developed further in the future

User flow map will focus on the core product which is dream journaling with mood and activity tracking

User enters dream journal the moment they wake up and are still remembering the dream; meaning users are not fully awake to enter full journal entry.

User Flow Map

Before I create my prototypes, I use a flow chart to define the action path and screens that I will need to produce. Here is one example of the flow chart when user adds a new entry before they go to sleep and getting ready to dream.
More user flow charts can be reviewed in the full case study.

Mobile Prototype

Click the images below to try out each prototype!

Research Resources

[1] Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology by Yuval Nir, Giulio Tononi(2010)
[2] Do Dreams Affect Everyday Life? - https://www.sleepfoundation.org/dreams/how-do-dreams-affect-sleep
[3]Do Dreams Affect Sleep? - https://www.sleepfoundation.org/dreams
[4] Creativity and Dreaming: Correlation of Reported Dream Incorporation Into Waking Behavior With Level and Type of Creative Interest - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10400419.2003.9651412
[5] Can Nightmares Affect Sleep? - https://www.sleepfoundation.org/nightmares
[6] How the brain constructs dreams by Erin J Wamsley - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7279884/#:~:text=Deep%20inside%20the%20temporal%20lobe,to%20remember%2C%20imagine%20and%20dream.
[7] The Science of Dreams: What Happens In The Brain When We Dream - https://choosemuse.com/blog/the-science-of-dreams-what-happens-in-the-brain-when-we-dream/
[8] The role of the basolateral amygdala in dreaming - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30660955/#:~:text=Neuroimaging%20studies%20have%20repeatedly%20shown,major%20role%20in%20dream%20plots.
[9] What Is an Electroencephalogram (EEG)? - https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-an-eeg-test-and-what-is-it-used-for-3014879

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