UpBeat: A music alarm app that helps get the morning started on a good note 

Defining the problem: Many people don't enjoy the waking up experience and tend to wake up stressed. People don't wake up with positive stimulation and tend to be rushed. 

How might we better the waking up experience? 

Significance of need: I wanted to design a music alarm app that would make the waking up experience more fun. Along with this, I wanted to create a sense of competition and stimulation that would motivate people to get up on time

I interviewed 4 college students and one graduate student to understand the waking up experience. Many stated that they didn't like the sound of their alarm. Also, many wake up rushed and not getting positive stimulation. 

" I really don't like alarm sounds. I usually wake stressed out and easily turn of my alarm without getting up." 

Key Takeaways 

1. People look at their phones when going to sleep and waking up

2. People wake up rushed without positive stimulation

3. People easily sleep passed their alarms and push the snooze button 

4. People stay up late and wake up tired 

Prototyping and User Testing 

As I am a big music lover, I wanted music to help the waking up experience. With a music alarm app I wanted people to wake up to their favorite songs but also have a sense of competition when doing so to help increase the motivation to wake up on time.

My app allow the user to set a song to wake up to then when the alarm goes off they have to complete a lyric of that song. If they get the lyrics right they get points which are show on their profile and their friends profile as score. On the app they can also see what their friends are waking up to and what their score is. 

Mid fidelity prototype: 

For my mid fidelity prototype I created a very basic figma outline for the app. This included a page to see what your friends listen to and a page to set your own personal alarms. Along with this there was an alarm page that included the song tittle and finishing the lyrics. 

Feedback:

Users really like the social media aspect of it along with its encouragement of competition with seeing other peoples scores. 

"I really like the social media aspect of it. It's like social media just for the morning which I've never seen before."

High Fidelity Prototype 

For my final project I wanted to keep in mind aspects of design and make the social media feature of the app more prominent. 

I wanted the colors to be vibrant for positive stimulation when waking up in the morning, which I chose a yellow and red scheme for. I also emphasized the social media aspect of the app by using features similar to social media apps like instagram where there is a home button and screen to see who your following, your profile and a search tool. I also emphasized the social media aspect with adding a like button to the posts that show what song your friends woke up to. The sense of competition is emphasized with the scores under users profile photos.