Wingbuddy

Client

Spark networks

Duration

8 hours

Role

UI/UX designer

Process

Design thinking

Tools

Adobe photoshop,
Adobe Illustrator,
Adobe XD,
Google forms

Understand

Problem statement

For a user group whose age range is 30-40 years old, there is an observed problem of lack of motivation when it comes to sending the first message to a match. After a match occurs between two users, most of the time, they are not moving on with starting the conversations with their matches.

Objective

Design a match experience that makes it more encouraging and fun for these users to send the first message to their match.

Challenges

Users losing interest in the app due to a lack of conversations.
Both persons fear to open the conversation.
Motivate users to start a conversation.
Finding a solution that not only starts a conversation but also keeps it going.

Observe

Research goals

Identify what stops the user from starting a conversation.
Understand how we can help users in the best way.
Identify if our users are open to receiving help with opening conversations.
Identify what would motivate them to open the conversation.
Find out if there has been researched this topic already.

Competitive research

There are a lot of dating apps in the market, and they have been there for a lot of years now. Assuming they will have all bumped into problems throughout the years I was sure that the internet would be full of information about what makes an app good and what doesn’t. I start on google and try to find information about problems competitors faced, solutions they came up with, opinions of their users, and possible holes in the market to jump into. Doing online research like this also helps you find platforms the users are active on and gives you opportunities to contact them to conduct surveys, user interviews, etc.

Normally I would also conduct competitive research on several competitor apps to see how they work, what does not work, what kind of users they have, and so on.

Online surveys

Once I have defined the type of user, I reach out to them on forums, blogs, groups found in the research before. I start with an open survey to gather quantitative information in a short amount of time. The information that I am looking for must give me an insight into the overall goals and needs of the user. In this case, I am trying to find out what stops users from starting a conversation and what would motivate them to start a conversation.

I always like to end the survey with the question if they would be open to conduct in a remote user interview of +/- 15 minutes to gather more valuable information.

User interview

Keeping in mind the time for this research I interviewed two of my friends between the age of 35-45 who are using dating apps daily. I normally would interview at least 5 participants. The real-life interviews I conduct to acquire more quantitative data to get a more in-depth understanding of the user’s motivation, goals, needs, and frustrations.

Interview Analysis

To better understand and organize all the information gathered during the interviews, and analyze it, I used Affinity Mapping. This method helped me come up with a list of key insights, that helped me decide upon what aspects and features of the website I’m Going to include in my project.

Key insights

Difficult to start or maintain a conversation with someone I don’t know.
Lack of body language, inflection, tone, or sense of engagement.
Afraid to ask the wrong questions.
Afraid of being perceived as desperate, needy, only after sex, not good enough, not funny enough, too boring, Insensitive.
An only effort from one side.
A Lack of information on the profile so no topic to start talking about.
Only using the app to boost self-confidence.
Scared of rejection.
Expect the other person to have tons of conversations already.
The match is way too pretty, attractive, handsome.
Afraid the other person liked me by accident.
Don’t know how to introduce myself.

Point of view

User Persona – Defining the users

Ideate

User flows

After creating a user persona and user journey based on the data collected from the affinity mapping, it is time to create user flow to understand how the user will navigate through the website.

Who is the user?
Luca a single data engineer of 38 years old living in Berlin looking to start a conversation in an online dating app.

What are Luca his goals and objectives?

Goal:
Get the confidence/motivation/help he needs to start a conversation with a new match

Objectives:

Start a conversation
Maintain a conversation
Get help on topics to open the conversation
Take away the stress of getting a match

User statement
When I match with another user I want to be able to start an engaging and fun conversation without fear.

What is it that’s prompted Luca to begin the task?
When Luca receives a notification about being matched to another user.

What will tell Luca that his task is finished?
Luca will know when the task is finished when he has successfully started a conversation within the app messenger.

What information does Luca already know about the process?
Luca knows how to login to the app, swipe through profiles, like other profiles and, receive matches.

What additional information does Luca need to know to complete the task?
Luca needs guidance in how to start a conversation or learn about different ways to act.

Finally, what tools will Luca need to complete the task?
Luca will need a mobile phone with the app installed

Sitemap

Based on the previous research I would create a sitemap on the complete app and show where the feature comes in. But since in this case, I am only designing the feature I skip this step to be able to spend more time on the designs.

Design

Low, mid and high-fidelity wireframes

Based on the user research and analysis, I designed the first low fidelity wireframes and then translated these into the high-fidelity wireframes shown below.

But first, let’s meet Wingbuddy!

Wingbuddy is here to help start a fun and engaging conversation. Choose to let Wingbuddy:

Put together a ‘getting to know each other’ game.

Drop statements, defined by you, your match, or by me. give your opinion about it, rate the other’s opinion on importance, level of agreement, and let me calculate how well you fit together.

Introduce you

like your friends would do in a bar or at a party.

Come up with questions

Scan through your matches’ profiles and come up with interesting questions to start the conversation with.

Test

Next steps

Prototyping
Usability testing
Feedback iterations
Design libraries
Final design

Refine

Learnings

Keeping in mind the short time available for this project I was really surprised at how quickly I was able to gather information and put together an online survey. The design thinking process helped me a lot to organize my time, to focus on the next steps and, to keep clear research goals in mind.

At the beginning of the project, I’ve stumbled into some difficulties in narrowing down the right type of participants for the survey, and finding channels to put the survey. The answers gathered were not helpful for the project. It took a while before I got enough feedback to change the survey and gather valuable information.

In the future, I would identify the user better to make sure I can directly ask the right questions and don’t waste precious time. I would also take more time defining the problem for the same reasons. Finally, I would write a better description so the participants know what is being asked and why.

I also received feedback that the survey wasn’t inclusive enough. This is important to keep an eye on next time.

For me, it would be helpful to research what makes good survey questions, how to find the right audience, and how to describe the project in the heading of the survey.

Thank you!