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mHEALTH APP: SLEEP CYCLE

Final Project: mHealth Application Sleep Cycle

Genesis Gonzales

HLTH 302 Sec. 03

December 5, 2019
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Final Project: mHealth Application Sleep Cycle

For my final project I used an application called Sleep Cycle which is free on the iTunes

store and if you want access to all its features its 20 dollars. I used the app for a little over six

weeks. The app is used to monitor your sleep patterns by tracking your movement through your

phones microphone. Through your movement its able to determine what stage of sleep you’re in

and then calculates the percentage of what your quality of sleep is. It also has an alarm setting

which uses your movements to wake you up when you’re in your lightest sleep, so you wake up

easier. I wanted to improve my sleep my sleep because I was struggling to wake up in the

mornings and founding hard to fall asleep at night. I’ve never been an early bird and wanted to

make it a goal of mine to wake up before 11 am every day and fall asleep before 11pm every

night. When I first started using the app I was just using the basic and then two weeks into using

the app I signed up for the free trial to use all the features which included a sleeping aid, sleep

notes, wake up mood, heart rate, weather, Philips hue, and various types of graphs.

After using it for about six weeks I would recommend it to other users who are interested

in seeing their sleep patterns. I was really shocked when it recorded when I was snoring, and I

was able to hear a short clip of it, I had no idea that I snored. I would suggest to other users that

if you want to most accurate information about your sleeping schedule you have to use the app

for at least a month so that the app is able to collect an abundant amount of data to analyze. In

my own person experience after using the app every day I began to feel more energized in the

mornings typically with my regular alarm I would have hit snooze at least three times in order to

fully wake up, but with Sleep Cycle it only took the first alarm to wake me up and the noise itself

was more pleasant than the iPhone alarm. Every day during the week I had the app wake me up

between 7 and 7:30 am and then weekends I had no alarm simply letting the app analyze my
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sleep. The more I continued to use the app I began to notice that I was falling asleep earlier and

waking up earlier too especially on the weekends, my body began to wake up automatically

around 9-10 am.

The app itself was fairly easy to use. All it involved was having your phone connected to

the charger and placed faced down on a dresser by the side of your bed. Before you place your

phone down you choose whether you’re going to use the “smart” alarm or no alarm as well as

logging in what you did during the day. For example, in screenshot 1 the options where if you

worked out, ate late, drank tea, and had a stressful day. Then when you wake up if your using the

premium features, you’d log in your mood at the moment of waking up. The application doesn’t

take too much time out of your day since you’re really only using it at night and it’s just for a

couple seconds before you go to sleep. The only way it takes a lot of time out of your day is if

you’re looking at the graphs and statistics that the app has created based on your sleep schedule

since you find yourself getting into depth of what you discover about yourself.

After using the app for over a month I felt that it improved my overall health. You can

see it in the data as well that my sleep quality improved over the course of using the app every

night. One of the main goals that I had for myself about waking up earlier and sleeping earlier

too was achieved. In screenshot 2 it shows a graph of the times I went to bed and the times I

woke up every morning and, in the two graphs you can see the steady decline from the beginning

of using the app till today. Now I’m able to wake up at much earlier times because I’m falling

asleep earlier. Unlike before I would fall asleep at 12-2am and waking up at 11-12pm on days

that I didn’t have classes or work. Now I’m was getting my recommended 7-8 hours of sleep. In

screenshot 3 you can see a graph showing the progression of my hours if sleep with has been

slowly improving. I can also say that I definitely feel a change in my energy and mood. I feel
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more energetic in the morning instead of feeling groggy, so energetic that I’ve started to work

out as well which I think has also attributed to my better sleeping quality.

I would like to continue using this app long term because it has improved my sleeping

schedule. It’s instilled a routine in me which I didn’t have before and so by continuing the app

this new routine would continue. The app is fairly easy to use making it another reason why I

would use the app long term. The only downside is that I was using the free one-month trial

which included access to all the statistics and graphs of my progression, but my trial ended last

week and there’s not many features without buying their premium option. In all honesty I would

suggest to other users that if they want the full experience that buying the monthly subscription

would be the best option. Yet not everyone wants to pay $4.99 each month for an application on

their phone. That’s the only downside that I enjoyed all the features that the premium

subscription had to offer, especially the graphs that showed how my sleep was affected by the

moon, weather, activity(steps), and air pressure so if I don’t know if I’ll continue to like the app

without those features.

What I would change about the app would be that it made the monthly cast lower since not

everyone can afford that extra charge. That you could lose progress of a night’s sleep because the

app had issues with the phones microphone and you won’t know in till the next day when you

look at your sleep cycle graph. Other than that, I enjoyed the rest of the apps features and had no

other problems with it. It helped me better improve my quality of sleep by giving me a routine

each night and morning. I enjoyed being able to see what factors affected my sleep so then I

could try to improve it the next day such as drinking tea before bed or working out that day. I

strongly feel that this app could potentially help other individuals who are struggling with the
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same sleeping issues I was having and it’s also has interesting features and statistics about our

sleep that I enjoyed.

Sleep Cycle website. (2009). Retrieved from https://www.sleepcycle.com/

Day in, Day Out – The Importance of Routine in Our Daily Lives. (2019). Sleep.org. The
National Sleep Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.sleep.org/articles/day-in-day-out-the-
importance-of-routine-in-our-daily-lives/
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Appendix

Screenshot 1: Activities that affect sleep. Screenshot 2: bedtime and wake up time.

Screenshot 3: hours of sleep