Dreamboard
Complete process to be published soon.
Assignment
Dreamboard is an app for registering dreams and their content in the most intuitive and fast way possible, even while waking up from a dreamstate.
The first seconds are crucial, since the memory of a dream vanishes quickly as a person wakes up, so this app was designed with ease and speed in mind. Concepted by a team of psychologists from Harvard University, it allows for the user to register their dreams and keep a journal while storing it in the cloud annonymously for big data analysis, feeding a database which is used to link and research the thesis that real-world events affect trends in collective subconsciousness - consequently affecting dreaming patterns n the general population.
As covered in the researchers' briefing, it is possible to link (and even predict up to a certain point) civil unrest, looming economic crisis, and even conflicts through semantic and symbolic dream analysis, therefore there is great value to this research data.
My task was to conceptualize and design an easy to use interface - especially so in the dream description screen.
The first seconds are crucial, since the memory of a dream vanishes quickly as a person wakes up, so this app was designed with ease and speed in mind. Concepted by a team of psychologists from Harvard University, it allows for the user to register their dreams and keep a journal while storing it in the cloud annonymously for big data analysis, feeding a database which is used to link and research the thesis that real-world events affect trends in collective subconsciousness - consequently affecting dreaming patterns n the general population.
As covered in the researchers' briefing, it is possible to link (and even predict up to a certain point) civil unrest, looming economic crisis, and even conflicts through semantic and symbolic dream analysis, therefore there is great value to this research data.
My task was to conceptualize and design an easy to use interface - especially so in the dream description screen.
Description
Focusing on the part that was most crucial within the app - the “Add Dream” screen - a set of minimum steps to describe a dream were selected from a larger sample provided by the research team, in order to make it easier for someone who just wakes up and wants to describe a dream, to do it within less than a half-minute time frame - before false memories or parts of the dream start to disappear from a persons’ consciousness.
Dissecting the original larger data set into the themes “Mood”, “Type, ”Emotions”, “Colours” (which is used to prove or disprove that some people dream in monochromatic tones only) and “Role”, these were deemed to be the best candidates for one-tap selectionable characteristics that could easily be inserted to describe the dream as quickly as possible - at least the mood of the dream - and can be selected within the target time limit of 30 seconds even while a person is waking up.
Contextual descriptions can be used later on to add a free narration of the dream at the end of the screen.
Since the data collection goal is to gather as much macro sentiment as possible, these were deemed to be the most useful characteristics to gather from a dream, and the ones that are actually used for data analysis - therefore given priority over more personal and detailed descriptions such as people involved and place names.
An added feature that I deemed necessary for this app (designed in 2015), which since then became standard in most apps - including operating systems such as iOS - was a default “night mode”, which prevented glare and delayed waking up of the user.
This was embedded in the app and worked automatically, which was at the time quite an innovative feature.
Dissecting the original larger data set into the themes “Mood”, “Type, ”Emotions”, “Colours” (which is used to prove or disprove that some people dream in monochromatic tones only) and “Role”, these were deemed to be the best candidates for one-tap selectionable characteristics that could easily be inserted to describe the dream as quickly as possible - at least the mood of the dream - and can be selected within the target time limit of 30 seconds even while a person is waking up.
Contextual descriptions can be used later on to add a free narration of the dream at the end of the screen.
Since the data collection goal is to gather as much macro sentiment as possible, these were deemed to be the most useful characteristics to gather from a dream, and the ones that are actually used for data analysis - therefore given priority over more personal and detailed descriptions such as people involved and place names.
An added feature that I deemed necessary for this app (designed in 2015), which since then became standard in most apps - including operating systems such as iOS - was a default “night mode”, which prevented glare and delayed waking up of the user.
This was embedded in the app and worked automatically, which was at the time quite an innovative feature.
