
Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software. - phames
http://www.sleepio.com/
======
roryokane
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.

~~~
phames
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>

------
brackin
Incredible homepage and introduction but I'd love a 7-day trial to see if it's
for me.

~~~
phames
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.

------
sneak
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?"

~~~
phames
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!!

How would _you_ do it if you were us?

~~~
sneak
My issue is not with your way of input, but with the question itself. My sleep
patterns shift forward every single day.

I no more have a time I go to bed every night than I have a US zip code or a
ten-digit cell phone number.

~~~
phames
Understood. Fair point.

We've taken what are the clinical standard measures - and some indeed feature
counterintuitive questions. And you're right, one of the main issues with
'insomnia' is an unreliable sleep pattern.

We don't want to know how you slept last night, since this may be
unrepresentative; but as you say an 'average' may also not capture it/be a
natural way to report it. 3 x sample points ('last 3 nights') may be
longwinded. Will consider...any ideas on a better question?

~~~
cperciva
Start with "do you go to bed at roughly the same time (within 1-2 hours) most
nights?" and only ask the "what time" question if people say yes to the first
one.

------
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.

~~~
phames
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!

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

~~~
phames
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...
:)

~~~
minikomi
Man, good luck. It's a head smackingly obvious yet simple idea.. some more:
quitting smoking, learning a language, cooking at home.. :)

~~~
phames
Thanks man! Yes it's a case of picking battles really at first - even within
sleep there's so much we can do...

------
jordn
This looks great! Can you tell us some more about how you managed to get into
a large national pharmacy chain like boots?

~~~
phames
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.

------
phames
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!

~~~
splatzone
Tried to view it at college but there's no sound on the PC - any chance of
subtitles/text only?

~~~
phames
Good point. We actually have support for subtitles - but our first goal was to
mimic a more human interaction and see how it helped adherence rates. So far
since users make time to sit down and follow the programme each week this
doesn't seem to have been a major problem, but I agree for trying it out the
requirement for sound is limiting.

~~~
splatzone
Awesome. I have to say, this is very impressive. Is there a free trial or
anything available? I would love to try it out but, alas, I'm a skint student.

Especially since it's the start of the academic year I can imagine this going
down well with my student friends - maybe some kind of discount would make it
more enticing.

Either way, this looks awesome and clearly the result of a lot of hard work.
The Boots partnership makes it all the more exciting. Congratulations guys :)

~~~
phames
Thanks so much! We _did_ have a free trial, but we're trying it without...and
since we're so close to launch we need to coordinate with what Boots is
offering. Out of interest what sort of price do you think you (and your
friends) would expect to pay for this, based on what you've seen?

~~~
splatzone
Well I'd be willing to pay £25-ish or maybe a bit more. I don't know if the
fact I'm Scottish skews that at all :P

The Boots thing is very interesting. Are you willing to share how that came
about? I'll need to nip in today and have a wee look.

~~~
phames
Thanks. I'm a big believer in using physical retail to explain (and confer
value on) digital products. See above - the Boots deal took years of time and
effort.

£25? More than I was expecting!

------
neya
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.

~~~
phames
Thanks neya! Very kind. Although...we have an HTML5 version running
concurrently; try it on iPad...

~~~
citricsquid
Why do you use the Flash version on desktop instead of the HTML5 version?

~~~
phames
We built the main sessions in Flash first because it was the quickest way to
discover what it was that we were building! So the Flash version has been
around longest and is the most stable (and currently the slickest). Once we
were confident of the functional requirements we built the HTML5 version, but
that's still in beta so we display the Flash version by default if you have it
installed/enabled. Quite a few technical challenges we had to overcome to
chain videos seamlessly in HTML5 on iPad...we'll definitely be writing about
it once the launch dust has settled...

------
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!

------
JofArnold
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.

~~~
phames
:-) Thanks Jof!

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

~~~
phames
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?

~~~
d3ad1ysp0rk
Less characters to type.

------
rane
Is there a free alternative using the same methodology?

Sounds interesting, but £49.99 is way too much for me right now.

~~~
phames
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!!

~~~
bjourne
I'd gladly pay £100 or more.. If I actually believed the product would work on
me. However, there is so much crap and scams on the internet that it is hard
to believe a web site programme would be effective. All the thousands of "get
abs in six weeks!" ads has made me cynical. Maybe if someone I trusted had
taken the programme and could recommend it to me it would put be over the
trust threshold.

~~~
phames
Yep peer referral is the most powerful driver - you've echoed the view of
pretty much every sleep sufferer I've interviewed!

The Boots partnership was in part to try to build that trust (and therefore
value).

------
moe
Which text-to-speech engine are you using for the professor?

~~~
phames
None - it's all recorded...er, I mean magic.

~~~
moe
Then that's a nice narrator you have there!

------
pibefision
suggestion: on main landing, change green button for an inputbox for email
request + a green button.

~~~
phames
Thanks. Can I ask why?

~~~
e-dard
So that you provide as little friction as possible to getting people to sign
up. For example, with your current button I was reluctant to press it because
I would assume there would be a big form on the other side. However, I'm more
likely to sign up for more info if it's only an email required.

~~~
phames
You've inadvertantly highlighted a UX failing of ours - that's not actually a
sign up form!

We ask for your first name so you can meet The Prof; another thing we're
wrestling with, how to introduce that (non-standard) experience in a clear
way...

~~~
citricsquid
"All we need is your name to show you a preview", or "You won't need to enter
anything else unless you purchase". Emphasise that the name is all you need, I
think that would solve the issue.

~~~
phames
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 challenge...

~~~
madcap
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.

~~~
phames
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!

