Project 5 Ephemeral

Project Overview

Ephemeral is a dream journal app designed for users who are looking to track and enhance their dreaming experience. Using AI to bring dreams to life through visual storytelling, the app offers a unique way to explore and connect with the subconscious. By blending dream tracking with features that encourage restful sleep, Ephemeral provides an engaging tool for users to reflect, share, and improve their nightly journeys.

My Role

UX Researcher, UI Designer

Type

Group

Date

October 2023 - December 2023

Tool

To understand how often American adults remember their dreams and the frequency of dream recall.

Discover

Background Research

Research Objective

A survey was conducted across a diverse demographic of American adults to assess their dream recall patterns. Respondents were asked about the frequency with which they remember their dreams, ranging from "always" to "never."

Methodology

Reasons for Choosing Stable Diffusion

Low Consistent Recall
Only 1 in 10 adults report that they "always" remember their dreams, indicating that consistent dream recall is uncommon.

Desire for Improved Memory
Over 70% of the participants expressed a desire to remember dreams more clearly but lacked effective techniques or tools for doing so.

Importance of Community Support
There was interest in sharing dreams with others, especially for validation, finding meaning, or simply for fun. However, 52% of the participants hesitated due to no listeners or not feeling their dreams were "interesting enough" to share.

Problem Statement

Many people have difficulty recalling their dreams clearly, and while there is interest in sharing these experiences, challenges like fragmented memories, privacy concerns, nowhere to share, and uncertainty about sharing prevent deeper engagement. This highlights a need for tools that enhance dream recall and foster a supportive community for sharing and exploring dreams.

Ideation

AI Research

When choosing an AI tool for generating dream visuals, we compared several options, including Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney. Here is a brief comparison of each tool, followed by reasons for choosing Stable Diffusion.

Stable Diffusion is open-source, providing flexibility and control for customizing AI models to fit specific dream visualizations. This allows for fine-tuning to create unique outputs. It produces high-quality, detailed images that can be adapted to various dream scenarios. Plus, with strong community support, the tool continues to evolve, making it reliable for generating dream visuals.

Key Findings

Market Research

After deciding on Stable Diffusion as our AI tool, we conducted market research and carried out a competitive analysis to evaluate how other related products perform in terms of dream visualization and sharing features.

Opportunities

Through the functional analysis of competing products, we identified potential opportunity areas.

Target Users

Age 12+ who wants to keep track of their dreams as well as improve their dreaming experiences.

Persona

Deliver

Mid-fidelity Wireframes

Landing Page

Generation Page

Snooze Page

Community Page

My Dreams Page

• Free Al dream visualization and interpretation

• Sleeping Aid Feature

• Community to share dreams

Define

Profile Page

User Testing Summary

After completing the mid-fi prototypes, we conducted the first round of user testing and, based on user feedback, summarized the following areas for improvement:

• Clearer Feature Zoning

• Comprehensible Feature Descriptions

• Add Navigation Bar

• Complete Usage Steps

Key Pages Improvements

Home Page

Generation Page

Snooze Page

Community Page

My Dreams Page

Profile Page

Second Round User Testing Summary

Then we conducted the second round user testing on our modified mid-fi prototypes. We summarized the feedback and found we could refined the design in the following aspects:

• Higher Color Contrast

• Clearer Navigation Bar

• Highlight Key Functions

Key Screens Final UI

Then we conducted the second round user testing on our modified mid-fi prototypes. We summarized the feedback and found we could refined the design in the following aspects:

• Higher Color Contrast

• Clearer Navigation Bar

• Highlight Key Functions

Landing Page