The virtual co-design of sleep solved – a case study of an educational sleep app designed with teens
The virtual co-design of sleep solved – a case study of an educational sleep app designed with teens
Background: Sleeplessness is an emerging epidemic amongst young people. Numerous apps exist to mediate sleep problems using a variety of CBT-i workshop design approaches. Virtually crowdsourcing co-design, however, provides the promise of rapid and vastly increased data. The rapid co-design of mHealth apps is an important part of the emerging big data, digital health citizen era. Objective: This exploratory case study explored the virtual, crowdsourced co-design of Sleep Solved—an educational mHealth sleep app designed with teens, to learn which virtual methods were used to engage teen co-designers and how these methods can be scaled up. Methods: We conducted an enquiry-based iterative case study utilising the Bayazit 3-stage model. 85 teens participated over 11 months. Data was thematically analysed over several design iterations. Results: Rapid virtual feedback allowed for quick pivots in a short time frame. Four stages of feedback from teens led to iterative changes to scientific information contextualisation and user experience, from lo-fidelity mock-ups through to a coded app beta. Conclusion: The co-design of Sleep Solved exemplified the potential of virtually crowdsourcing teens in mHealth. Key to this evolution will be the ability to leverage big data utilising AI and machine learning approaches to data collation and synthesization, such that meaningful and contextual findings can be applied in line with software development timelines.
co-design, crowdsourcing, digital health citizens, mHealth, person-based design, sleep, teens, user experience
3-27
Duffy, Anthony
75c141ac-593c-48a3-8277-08110259d4f2
Bennett, Sarah E.
7a9fa50a-39d1-4e82-a1f3-d3cdb5f5e6f8
Yardley, Lucy
64be42c4-511d-484d-abaa-f8813452a22e
Moreno, Sylvain
e26542f8-7600-4358-a80d-b2f9651fce19
23 April 2025
Duffy, Anthony
75c141ac-593c-48a3-8277-08110259d4f2
Bennett, Sarah E.
7a9fa50a-39d1-4e82-a1f3-d3cdb5f5e6f8
Yardley, Lucy
64be42c4-511d-484d-abaa-f8813452a22e
Moreno, Sylvain
e26542f8-7600-4358-a80d-b2f9651fce19
Duffy, Anthony, Bennett, Sarah E., Yardley, Lucy and Moreno, Sylvain
(2025)
The virtual co-design of sleep solved – a case study of an educational sleep app designed with teens.
Kondylakis, Haridimos and Triantafyllidis, Andreas
(eds.)
In Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare - 18th EAI International Conference, PervasiveHealth 2024, Proceedings.
vol. 612,
.
(doi:10.1007/978-3-031-85575-7_1).
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
Background: Sleeplessness is an emerging epidemic amongst young people. Numerous apps exist to mediate sleep problems using a variety of CBT-i workshop design approaches. Virtually crowdsourcing co-design, however, provides the promise of rapid and vastly increased data. The rapid co-design of mHealth apps is an important part of the emerging big data, digital health citizen era. Objective: This exploratory case study explored the virtual, crowdsourced co-design of Sleep Solved—an educational mHealth sleep app designed with teens, to learn which virtual methods were used to engage teen co-designers and how these methods can be scaled up. Methods: We conducted an enquiry-based iterative case study utilising the Bayazit 3-stage model. 85 teens participated over 11 months. Data was thematically analysed over several design iterations. Results: Rapid virtual feedback allowed for quick pivots in a short time frame. Four stages of feedback from teens led to iterative changes to scientific information contextualisation and user experience, from lo-fidelity mock-ups through to a coded app beta. Conclusion: The co-design of Sleep Solved exemplified the potential of virtually crowdsourcing teens in mHealth. Key to this evolution will be the ability to leverage big data utilising AI and machine learning approaches to data collation and synthesization, such that meaningful and contextual findings can be applied in line with software development timelines.
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Published date: 23 April 2025
Additional Information:
Publisher Copyright:
© ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2025.
Keywords:
co-design, crowdsourcing, digital health citizens, mHealth, person-based design, sleep, teens, user experience
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 509379
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/509379
ISSN: 1867-8211
PURE UUID: 671c6f83-1a0e-44ac-adf8-3015ce75e797
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Date deposited: 19 Feb 2026 17:50
Last modified: 20 Feb 2026 02:36
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Contributors
Author:
Anthony Duffy
Author:
Sarah E. Bennett
Author:
Sylvain Moreno
Editor:
Haridimos Kondylakis
Editor:
Andreas Triantafyllidis
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