The UI design of Rise, a sleep tracker that looks better on the App Store

José opens the episode on Rise, a sleep tracker with more than 5 million downloads 0:00. He knows nothing about it beyond its page on App Store Tracker, a stats site 0:09.

A drug called sleep

The onboarding opens with a bit of storytelling 0:27:

“Imagine I told you there was a drug that gave you” José, 0:22

“I’m liking the top down animation just like things swiping through” José, 0:41

You can swipe back 0:46, and while it isn’t the most fluid thing ever, the idea is really cool 0:51. They’re teaching you that sleep is important, and therefore Rise is important 0:58:

“It’s all about the narrative, remember, always about the narrative.” José, 1:03

“Craft” is not “create”

“I like the word craft for profile because it no longer feels like a chore and it feels like something that I should do with care, right?” José, 1:16

“Craft is very different from create, which is very different from complete. I like this copy here.” José, 1:24

A very long questionnaire

Then the questions begin. He still doesn’t see the point of “How did you hear about Rise?” 1:38. He spots a Skip and guesses every step can be skipped 1:47, and the design is extremely basic 1:55. Screens that kind of look like paywalls keep appearing between steps, and the fonts are less than ideal 2:38.

“Okay, this onboarding is extremely long.” José, 3:17

It asks for motion data, and he can’t see how that matters 3:34, then another screen out of nowhere 3:40:

“I’m not gonna read all that because there’s too much text in all these screens” José, 3:47

Apple Health he expected 3:59. Notifications come with no clear reason 4:10. From the App Store screenshots, he thought the app would be better designed 4:19.

Numbers from your sleep

Rise works out your sleep need from your past nights. His first big issue with the concept 4:58: it likely relies very heavily on Apple’s sleep data, and his isn’t accurate 5:08. He also finds the copy really hard to read 5:32, though it might just be him 5:40.

Then come the visualisations he came for 5:50:

“Interesting graphic here showing the day vertically with the text up top” José, 6:09

“This is a very large gap of time from 9 a.m to 1 something p.m” José

“I wish I was counting how many taps I have done on this onboarding because it’s been a lot” José, 6:39

And it asks for a review before giving him anything.

The timeline

After the onboarding, the timeline is the star of the show:

“Oh and we’re finally, finally on the homepage.” José

The gift at the top is an invite upsell, to get more people to spread the app, and its badge stays until you send it. Along the timeline, it tells you when to avoid coffee:

“That’s interesting, it can be useful.” José

If you allow the microphone, Rise listens all night to find when you wake, which is cool if you want very detailed results.

Tools, and a home he wishes he’d seen first

“This panel does look quite nice up top.” José, 15:40

He likes the gradient they apply at the top, and wishes they used it elsewhere 15:43. Then the home tab:

“So home, oh very cool actually.” José

“This is the coolest view so far.” José

But navigation is confusing. Tapping the main card takes you to another tab 16:45, with no animation to explain where you are 16:59:

“Basically, all of these small cues that you can get from animations in terms of navigation.” José

The verdict

“The thing that I take from this episode is that you can make yourself look very good on the app store” José, 17:45

“But then there are also a couple little nuggets that I actually really liked” José, 17:51

He thinks the home could look very interesting with a bit more work 17:54. He likes their graph:

“The way they visualize the energy, that’s new, at least new to me, and it’s cool” José, 17:58

And on their panels, he likes how they add shadows at the top to make them feel a bit more alive 18:11.