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Show HN: Sleepio - how I cured my insomnia, turned into software.
- phames 14y agoAfter 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 14y agoTried to view it at college but there's no sound on the PC - any chance of subtitles/text only?
- phames 14y agoGood 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 14y agoAwesome. 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 14y agoThanks 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 14y agoWell 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 14y agoThanks. 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!
- JofArnold 14y agoI'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 14y ago:-) Thanks Jof!
- brackin 14y agoIncredible homepage and introduction but I'd love a 7-day trial to see if it's for me.
- phames 14y agoThanks. 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.
- phames 14y ago...and thanks so much for the praise!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- phames 14y agoHa! 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...
- bpaluzzi 14y ago"Most widely used" seems a bit strong... https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cbt https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cbt (just in the interest of full disclosure, I'm the lead developer for Sleepio)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rane 14y agoIs there a free alternative using the same methodology? Sounds interesting, but £49.99 is way too much for me right now.
- phames 14y agoWell, 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!!
- JofArnold 14y agoHave you tried anchoring against that £600 price in the copy/design? Could be compelling.
- phames 14y agoSo - we've tried to be strict on limiting our messages, and we've developed these based on iterative testing - with users on the site, but also on the street with strangers (shoving the pack under their noses and asking what they think it is!). So it's always been a candidate, but other messages seemed more important, largely because it seems that most people think poor sleep -> sleeping pills, and do not think -> CBT / therapy. As in, it's the immediate frame of reference. That's been confirmed in training/talking to Boots staff, but they have found that reference point useful in making the value case to customers.
- bjourne 14y agoI'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.
- jordn 14y agoThis looks great! Can you tell us some more about how you managed to get into a large national pharmacy chain like boots?
- rshlo 14y agoWould be happy to know about this too. Seems great!
- phames 14y agoIt 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.
- minikomi 14y agoWow.. The "Program" model seems like it would work for a lot of things - diets, exercise, study... Thought about making it a platform?
- phames 14y agoYes 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 14y agoMan, good luck. It's a head smackingly obvious yet simple idea.. some more: quitting smoking, learning a language, cooking at home.. :)
- phames 14y agoThanks man! Yes it's a case of picking battles really at first - even within sleep there's so much we can do...
- RexRollman 14y agoIf it branches out to things other than sleep, then don't you think you will need a new name?
- phames 14y agoYes, we'll need an umbrella name. But right now it's more important for it to be immediately obvious what the problem is that we can help with, since we rely on self-diagnosis, (the user is actively looking for a sleep solution either online or in Boots store).
- thalur 14y ago
- tokenizer 14y agoWhy wouldn't you use sleep.io as the default?
- phames 14y agoHmmm 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 14y agoLess characters to type.
- highace 14y agoAnswered 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.
- phames 14y agoInteresting. Thanks! That will be my response from now on...
- fusiongyro 14y agoSomebody 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.
- phames 14y ago
- sneak 14y agoStarting 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 14y agoThe 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?
- yvoschaap2 14y agoHow about a visual analog round clock where people can drag the hour hand to a certain point, and choose to create a range by dragging and so extending the time slice with another hour hand.
- phames 14y agoThanks for the suggestion - it's something we've considered; the issue with our tests to date has been getting the minute-to-minute fidelity with a circular interface (plus it's actually quite hard to drag something accurately in a circular motion). But we should revisit this all with fresh eyes - and the idea much appreciated!
- sneak 14y agoMy 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 14y agoUnderstood. 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?
- pibefision 14y agosuggestion: on main landing, change green button for an inputbox for email request + a green button.
- phames 14y agoThanks. Can I ask why?
- e-dard 14y agoSo 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 14y agoYou'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 14y ago"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 14y agoThanks, 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...
- roryokane 14y agoI’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 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 14y agoThanks 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 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22654196
- neya 14y agoThis 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 14y agoThanks neya! Very kind. Although...we have an HTML5 version running concurrently; try it on iPad...
- citricsquid 14y agoWhy do you use the Flash version on desktop instead of the HTML5 version?
- phames 14y agoWe 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...
- moe 14y agoWhich text-to-speech engine are you using for the professor?
- phames 14y agoThanks 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!
- spiralganglion 14y agoI'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 14y agoThanks 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!