Blindly Date
—Problem
Creating more meaningful connections through AMBIGUITY and safety
Foster stronger more richer connections between
couples through ambiguity, while fostering safety.
Role
UX UI Designer
Date
March 2019- Nov 2019
Research Methods
User Survey
User Interview
Usability Testing
Competitive Analysis
Design Methods
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Rapid Wireframe Prototyping
High Fidelity Prototyping
Interaction Design
Dev Passoff
Tools
Adobe XD
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Scope & Planning
With a previous design in place I was tasked with making the design more unisex and user friendly. Iconography and color palette had to be update to be more friendly. Additionally care needed to go into product validation and user research as not data repository had been established.
RESEARCH
As a green user of dating apps, I planned to download all of them and conduct personal usability tests to gain a deeper understanding of the usability patterns and physiological effects.
Prior to doing that, I needed to understand our potential users' thoughts on the current market of dating apps. This also lead to the discovery of apps that were a bit less mainstream.
USER INTERVIEWS
With over 50 million people on dating apps, I wasn't hard-pressed to find users to interview. Wanted to make sure I could get a good feel for the market, I ensured each of the users tested had at least 3 apps they were actively using.
“I prefer Tinder over Grinder. Grinder is too invasive and creepy for me.”
-Dexter 35/M Gay
“I have been catfished by girls with filters on every single one of their photos”
-Justin 22/M Straight
“Plenty of Fish let’s just anyone message me. I woke up yesterday to 2400 messages!”
-Elizabeth 29/F Straight
“I was paying for Hinge because you could see who else pays, and I assumed they were more serious. ”
-Hana 22/F Straight
Download them all
Never utilizing online dating apps so I downloaded them all, the good the bad the ugly.
• Zoosk
• eharmony
• match*
• Coffee meets Bagel*
• SweetPea
• Tinder
• Bumble
• Plenty of Fish
• Hinge
•Happn
* Paywall after initial profile set up and minimal free services
Most app in their free versions are made to match people with very little consideration to the likelihood of making a strong match. Paid services give foster hope that the others would be more willing to get into long term relationship due to the financial investment, which is not always true.
Tinder
"The hook up app” that broke everything wide open. Hot or not reinvented, but for dating, if you both submit “Hot” then you are introduced. Years ago many men started to implement the just swipe right strategy to increase matches. In this strategy, you swipe right on everyone to ensure you don’t miss a match.
After the discovery of the method, women got mad, then got even. Implementing the same exact strategy with a bit more tact. Swiping on most of all guys, I found women the be a bit pickier with this strategy, to get more matches.
The colliding forces that these two strategies are what drove this app to become the “Hook Up App” for straight people. On the other side of the spectrum, gays have flocked to Tinder to gain privacy from Grinder, which shows you the distance apart you and potential matches are.
Bumble
Offering a new safer model for female users Bumble shifted all the power to initiate conversations after matches. The Tinder "just swipe" strategy now turned men into the meat within the market. Most women I interacted with found this to be their favorite app due to the format and the quality of men on the platform.
Bumble was a game changer for the market of dating apps. It proved that you could build upon the success of Tinder while offering seemingly one new feature and it would still be a huge success. Issues arose when you get a match in your “Beeline” because your natural instinct is to swipe right on all candidates until you locate the match to get that rush of endorphins.
Aggravation sets in when you expel your daily allotment of likes, but you can migrate to desktop and start matching again. This seems to be a flaw in their system. Additionally opening two windows allows you to side by side compare the blurred photos to the unblurred ones on desktop.
Hinge
This app while was the most painstaking to onboard due to its amount of poking and prodding it did to learn about you, gave me a good sense of any potential match. They also encourage you to add a comment to accompany andy like on a part of the users' profile. This ice breaker is a stroke of genius because it helps and coaches the user when reaching out to a potential match.
On a deeper physiological level, it gives you better insights into your potential matches thoughts about you or part of your life. Gives the user a level of reassuring feeling know some time was put into the initial first contact. Additionally, the prompts that Hinge gives you to build your profile are much more meaningful, and making the user stop on the page to get to know a little more about the person.
Happen
This is a very unique app, focused on utilizing the geo-locater in your phone to ensure that you have crossed paths with your matches. They lack the criteria department with only an age slider and 5 other factors within their algorithm. This app is also only designed for densely populated locations as it seems to be lacking numbers in smaller towns across the US.
The interface on the app has large photographs that are great but reinforce the inherent superficial problem with all apps in this market.
Plenty of Fish
Their onboarding has a huge barrier to entry, and their matching feature is based solely on photo, name, and age. You must click in to read more about the person, making this app highly superficial. Other issues with the app you can like people twice (meet screen and in the profile) with no easy way to unlike until matched. Profiles are problematic as they do not off any hierarchy to the information. Utilization of icons is used to break up the information, but the color and text styles are not changed making it hard to grab the users' interest. On the bright side, it has a cute fish jumping out of the water loading screen.
Overall this app does exactly what the name implies, it brings you many fish in the sea, but what if you are a saltwater fish, in need of a freshwater mate. The paywall to see people who have liked you is similar to bumble, but without the blur, much easier to see the person who liked you on desktop and bypass.
Match/Eharmony/C+B/ SweetPea
I lump these apps together because they almost all have a pay to play feature to even get into the good stuff. These apps are on the surface focused on genuine connections and safety but fall short in the freeium versions.
Findings
Competitive Analysis
Complete with my own and user insights, the below map plots current market apps based on the ability to find genuine matches, and the safety the user feels while using.
*Tinder proved to be safer for the homosexual community
Problems
Photo is the first look and main focus
Catfishing and lying happen often
Current apps are not equal across communities
Many apps underlying safety concerns
Real connections are hard to make
Major Issues
Low barrier to entry, they allow all people to create an account or multiple accounts, but with minimal verification catfishing, fake profiles, and even women marketing their other paysites create a network that does not foster meaningful connections.
MVP Validation
Through research and user interviews, validation of the problem was surely in hand. The founders and I discussed various ideas of how to unlock the distorted image. Timer slowly revealing during a chat, a predetermined set of messages needed to be achieved, and various other ideas. This idea allowed the users to get to know each out though text conversations removing the superficial expectations. It was then up to me to make this look good and ensure the user experience was seamless going forward.
UI Design
Obtaining the pervious designers work, the team was pretty pleased with the new color story (to the right) and direction of they were headed. This document was passed on to me along with the below wireframe.
Profile
At the heart and soul of every dating app is the profile. Through extensive usability testing and user research we knew the profile needed to have the following:
• Profile Photo
• Name/Age/Sex/Location
• Distance
• About Section
• Interest for compatibility chosen at onboarding
• Question and Answer section
• Block/Report Button
LoFi Designs
HiFi Designs
Working design elements and colors into the profile wireframes, and this was the outcome. Many variations of many elements. including the following;
• Match Percentage
• Like Button
• Global Navigation Variations
• Users Chosen Interest
• Photo Size and Location
• Pink for Women/ Blue for Men
Final Design
Less lover baring colors, from the onboarding, this profile direction is a clean easy way to get to know someone through with or without access to photos.
Additional Photos
Tapping the profile photo will gain access to more photos the user has uploaded to their profile. No 2 year old photos, filtered photos, and photos of groups of people.
Key Design Features
• Full-screen photos
• Timestamp for authenticity
• “Uploaded” denotation (limited to 1/2 of total uploaded)
UX Design
Discussing the findings with the founders, we decided the app must focus on genuine connections, and safety which starts with ensuring the people on the platform are real.
Safety
• Fake Profiles
• Catfishing
• Out of Date Photos
To combat Catfishing and out of date photos, we devised to have users upload a new photo into the app every 2 weeks. Pairing this threshold with the AI to ensure the photo was of the person's face, as well as throwing an error if it recognizes sunglasses, filters, and other face obstructions stopping the upload.
Fake Profiles
This challenge was a bit harder. Furiously brainstorming different ideas we decided that uploading a photo of your state-issued Identification card would be a great stop gate for people trying to get on the platform to deceive people. Stored in the database if flagged, blocking this user from the platform would be easy and safe.
Genuine Connections
At the heart and soul of Blindly was the ability to connect real people, and build connections based on things other than looks. This blind dating concept, brained by the two co-founders, needed two critical factors, how to match people looking for connection, and once they were matched, how they would unveil the user's photos to one another.
Start at the Beginning
To start we designed a 4 step onboarding process that was fun, and more telling than the current market apps.
1. Necessities Sexual Preference, Age Range, and Match Radius
2. Utilizing a “This or That” with a slider combats the empty field syndrome.
3. “What are you in to” gained hard data points (Extend to 3 pages)
4. “Pick One” questions based on location help tell potential matches about you on a subconscious level.
Pick 3
While this may look like a normal checkmark flow, the idea behind this is to eventually pull this data for an algorithm to help match you based on similar choices. The cluster of choices would be strategically outlined to give better matches over time. During the infant stages of the app this would be a select all that apply feature.
This or that Slider
Sparked by my internal hatred for the “Beach or Mountain” question given by Bumble, where 85% of female users I came across choose to write in “Both”. To me this is an inherent problem for two reasons, the question is not answered correction for the way it is written, or the question is written wrong. There are inherently different things to do at both locations and it tells you alot about someone base on their answer.
This feature allows you to choose which one you prefer more on a sliding scale of 10. This allows you to choose, Beach and Mountain, but gives is a numerical value on the backend to help match you with other users this garnering a more meaningful connection.
Pick One
This question was an innovative thought I had based on the fact that we already had the user's location. I have been deep into relationships and missed the mark on traveling with my partner. This question would pull your location and dating radius to define the question, the answer is up to you. As this feature builds, follow up questions can be added, like “Where are you most Stay?”
Questions like this comes up later in relationships and can be big deals for people. Knowing up front can help users build a better relationship from the start, especially in a digital age.
Now What?
With real users in a hypothetical lobby and ranked on the backend for matching, we needed to now focus on how these users will form genuine connections with one another without seeing a photo.
Channeling old school AOL chat rooms, we focused on ensuring that users were engaged with one another fulfilling a set of predetermined parameters set by the app on the back end. Kicking off the meeting I put together 3 scenarios on how we could reveal photos for the team to review.
Final Direction
To ensure the users are given the best opportunity to make a genuine connection, and ultimately see one another’s photos we decided on the final direction as a modified version of two of the above. Users not online at the time of the match, as at least one would always be, we gave them a second option when they logged into the match.
Reporting & Blocking
Reinforcing safety was an issue we wanted to ensure carried throughout the app. We had to design a easily intuitive reporting system.
Design Options
Option B was liked more than A, as the overlay gave us more continuity when reporting from various screens, like the profile screen.
Design meets Marketing
Another key feature of the app was the ghosting button. Harnessing the viral, trendy, meme-worthy terminology of being ghosted, we decided to design the reject button to mimic this trend. While it may be harsh, it was one way to boost the marketing of the app through design.
Interaction Design
The Matches dashboard was a unique challenge in itself, we wanted to give a unique experience for the user while keeping the key ideologies behind the app in mind.
Key Interaction Features
• New potential matches each day
• Limited 8 spots for dating focus
• Indicator for new matches
• Daily match limits.
Key Design Features
• Radial Design for bi-directional swiping
• Varying photo sizes for hierarchy
• Photos blurred for ambiguity
*Change to video gif of rotation.
Worked with Dev to troubleshoot bugs and ensure design was implemented properly.
High Fidelity Mocks
Step Away
Due to the lack of movement, and high turnover I removed myself from this project to focus on other endeavors. The development team has stalled on the backend, and was not making great progress on the front end. Running into trouble each and every week. I was later contacted to rejoin the team, and reluctantly did not join due to lack of progress since my departure.
Update
The update more improved user flow/high fidelity mockup is shown above. While it is much cleaner, it lacks the ambiguity set forth by the founders. It also is not very detailed in its approach interactions the user would have to complete such as cropping photos, and making matches.
Nail in the Coffin
In February 2020 almost 1 year after my time with Blindly, Netflix released “Love is Blind” a show that inherently was the same concept, but in TV form, as our app. The show was a runaway hit, and shortly after, apps started with the show's concept populated on the app store. Additionally, most major players in the space adopted some of these same safety measures, as well as ambiguity as a more focused part of their apps.
* Ask me any other questions you may have about this project.