From an offline sleep intervention to a digital journey schools can run themselves
Client
Project Sleep / Ghent University
Services
Strategy, information architecture, UX, web design, platform development
Sector
Research / prevention / education
Timeline
2025, from concept to first live test phase
Status
Live, in test phase
Tech stack
Nimbu, Liquid, Alpine.js, Tailwind CSS, custom cloud code
Project Sleep was already strong on content. The sleep intervention had been developed together with young people, researched and tested in schools. But to make it more widely usable, that approach — living in posters, flyers, lessons, materials and accumulated knowledge — had to be translated into something schools can work with independently.
We built not just a website, but a combination of a public information platform and a protected journey for schools. It includes onboarding, roles, steps, materials, shared links and follow-up per school.
Today Project Sleep has a digital form that makes the methodology transferable without losing its character. The first pilot feedback hit the mark right away: "very positive: attractive website, logical structure."
Project Sleep did not start as a digital exercise. The core was somewhere else.
Ghent University already had an evidence-based sleep intervention for schools. It had been developed in co-creation with young people, teachers and parents, and backed by effect and process research. So the content was already there. It just lived mostly in an offline reality: materials, lessons, agreements, posters, flyers and guidance.
As soon as you want a methodology like that to land more widely, you run into a different kind of question. Not: does this work on substance? But: how do you make this usable for schools that don't sit next to a research team?
A school that wants to join needs to know where to start, who to involve, what comes first, which materials are needed, how the planning runs and who can see or do what. If that logic stays in people's heads, PDFs and loose documents, scaling up becomes hard.
At the same time, this could not become a dry portal. Project Sleep is not only aimed at researchers or project coordinators. School teams and young people had to find their way in it too. The visual appearance was no detail. If the platform felt too administrative or too clinical, the project would lose exactly part of its strength.
So for us the real question was not: can you build a website?
The real question was: can you turn a proven offline methodology into a digital tool that supports schools step by step, and that also feels right for the people who have to work with it?
From the start we split the project into two layers. On one side a public part explaining what Project Sleep is, how the intervention works and why sleep matters at school. On the other side a protected section for schools that actually get to work.
That split mattered. The public part had to build trust and clarity. The protected part above all had to become a workable instrument. Because we had worked with the research group before on a smoking prevention project for young people, the direction became clear quickly.
The most important translation was in the structure of the platform itself, and its adaptability.
Instead of simply putting materials online, we broke the methodology down into phases, themes and concrete steps. For each school, its own journey is built from a central configuration. That journey contains explanations, materials, sequence, statuses and, where needed, feedback.
The result is not a download archive but a guided journey. Schools first fill in their basic details, assemble a core team, appoint a lead and then move through the preparation journey and the intervention. Every step has a clear place in the whole.
For us, that was the heart of this case. Not digitising the content as an archive, but digitising the methodology as a process. Because it was still in a research phase, we made sure content and steps remain adjustable and new journeys always start from the latest version, while schools that already started keep theirs.
Project Sleep also does not work with one kind of user. There are champions, core teachers, core pupils, dreamteachers, dreamcoaches, parents, school management and other followers. Not everyone needs to see the same things, let alone be able to change the same things.
Instead of covering that complexity with manuals and agreements, we built it into the platform itself. There is a dashboard for people with a login, there are shared links for teachers and pupils who mainly need to watch or carry out steps, and there is a separate track for stakeholders who want to follow progress.
That sounds technical, but the effect is very practical. The right people get the right context, without it becoming a tangle of exceptions for schools.
A tailored design was at the heart of the assignment.
Project Sleep has an audience of schools and young people. So the tool definitely could not look like a classic research website or an internal back end. The form had to be light, clear and inviting, without becoming childish.
That's why we chose a visual language with soft but lively colours, rounded cards, playful graphic accents and a rhythm that stays quick to scan. You see those design choices not only in the public website, but also in the dashboard and the shared step links. A good journey should not just be logical. Participants should also feel like continuing with it.
During development, Project Sleep was still in a test phase. That meant there had to be room for change.
The check-ins kept refining things: roles were simplified, content and logic were built from configurable steps, feedback was defined more sharply and the organisation check was worked out further.
We find this important in projects. We like thinking ahead about an application's future. When you digitise an offline methodology, you have to leave room for what only becomes visible once people actually start using it.
Project Sleep today has a digital form that goes far beyond a classic project website.
What's in place, concretely:
A public website that clearly explains what Project Sleep is and why sleep matters at school
A protected preparation journey in which schools fill in their own context and are guided step by step towards execution
A role model that fits the reality of a school, with different access for coordinators, teachers, pupils and followers
Step detail pages and material overviews that offer the methodology as a workable journey, not a loose collection of files
A digital structure that supports feedback, follow-up and later scaling far better than a combination of flyers, posters and loose manuals
Do you need a digital product that goes further than a website or app?
Tell us where your organisation wants to go and what's difficult today. We'll think along about a first workable step.
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