To design an innovative app that improves the lives of its target users by addressing a phenomenon we can not evade; love in a digital age.
Project duration- 5 weeks
concept
A personality and interest-based match maker, which helps people get to know each other by making them perform an activity together.
USER RESEARCH AND FINDINGS
I along with Daniel and Evan interviewed various users asking about what they thought of love, their views on modern-day dating apps, their struggles, etc to find opportunities to design for. We gathered our research and obtained a few insights.
key findings
People didn't feel valued when using dating apps.They didn't believe their profiles were given much time or attention.
After matching with another user, people often felt hugely pressured in breaking the ice and initiating a conversation.
People were getting tired of the 'hook-up' undertone of the most dating apps, currently available in the market.
User persona and Ideation
From the key findings, I made Personas and Scenario. That helped me to think of design principles, concepts for my users and come up with 'How might we?' questions to tackle the problem.
Low-Fi prototype
I sketched out my initial idea on paper.
From the key findings, I thought of an idea where a character would constantly converse with the user in terms of the progress with the chosen match. The user selects the date and time he's free and if the other person is free around the same time then the app sets them an activity to perform together, based on their interests.
The feedback I received was that the character having to be on the screen constantly might be annoying to some users. Some users would not take a leap of faith to perform an activity together in a public space without prior interaction.
The users wanted to know the activity beforehand so that it was easier for them to decide on the date.
User testing and peer review
I did user tests and peer-review to get feedback. In terms of visuals, it was clean and simple and in terms of the user flow the user was confused in a part of the flow as to what would happen after they selected the date.
Iteration and testing
Below is the stages of iterations carried out along the process.
The starting page initially had the icon(Lily) which would constantly exist on the screen like a chatbot. Based on user feedback I decided to discard it to get a better user flow, as it was causing a lot of dead-ends and confusion.
The app was very descriptive to the users about the next step, so I tried making it simpler and clearer without much text.
With the calendar, the users wanted the activity to be shown so that they could look at them and decide. The activity was important too if they wanted to connect with the person.
I played around with the colors to better suit the theme of the app. Allowing users to choose the date and merging it with public activities would be a difficult task so I went with the option of choosing the available activity rather than day/time.
I had written text to guide users in this page but then corrected that by using icons that are quicker to understand and takes the load of the users.
I also looked at linking the location directly from the app saving users time.
Final Iteration
The sign-in page is the first part which also involves verification for the safety of the users. Then there is a second part with a series of questions to understand the users, their personality, and interests to match them with the other person.
The second part of the setup page which shows them the progress along the way. The completion page to show them the end of the setup.
The home page acts as their update page informing them about the progress and upcoming events. They begin by clicking on the available activity at that time. They then can see the information about the activity and confirm if they like it.
They get a notification when the activity is close and receive the location. When they arrive at the activity they are sent the details of the match so that they meet up and interact.