Here’s the Final Prototype

Project Overview

Project Context

Wandure is a young startup based in Ottawa, Canada. Originally, Wandure was a travel app that allowed solo travellers to book experiences while abroad with other travellers. Over time however, Wandure realized that their users were actually using the app to connect with people and events in their own cities. For that reason, Wandure transitioned from a travel app to a dating app in 2019. Their biggest USP is that every match = a date. To eliminate the “pen-pal” nature of relationships between matches, Wandure gets matches on dates right away. When you match with someone, you choose a date and budget with your match within a 24 hour window after matching, and Wander plans a surprise date for you both.

By the end of this project, my aim is to 1. Add a new feature that will improve Wandure’s overall success rate, as well as overall new sign-ups, and 2. Improve any existing problems and add any supporting features to further facilitate the matching to meeting journey. Wandure has a great unique selling point and could really revolutionize the online dating world with some thoughtful changes.

Problem Statement

Upon some preliminary secondary research, the biggest glaring issue with online dating was turning a match into a potential partner. Most users are looking for a longterm relationship, and seem to get begrudgingly stuck somewhere between matching and conversing. Thus, I’ve come up with the following problem statements:

How Might We Make the Online Dating World an Exciting Place Again?

Approach: Understanding how singletons looking for relationships get frustrated, and improving upon existing Wandure features (and introducing supporting ones) to make the experience more enjoyable


How Might We Foster Better Connections Between Matches on Wandure?

Approach: Creating a new feature that improves the match success as well as turns matches into more successful dates

Project Vision

“To make dating exciting again. Wandure will get people to do what dating apps are really meant to do - get people on dates!"

Phases

For this project, we will begin by empathizing with our users. In order to give us inspiration on how to move forward with making the dating world exciting again, it is imperative that we know the barriers that exist for those looking for love online.

Project KPI

• # of New Sign Ups: Word of Mouth remains the most common way that people are influenced to try new things and products. If we design a truly great experience for dating, then people will find great connections, spread the word, and this should ultimately lead to more sign ups. With the pandemic increasing the activity on dating apps in general, this is a great time for Wandure to step in and prove its place in the online dating market.

• % of Match turned Dates: As Wandure’s main USP is getting people on dates, it only makes sense that one of our main KPI’s is not just creating matches, but turning matches into dates. If the percentage of matches that become dates increases, then we know that we are on the right track with our design decisions.

Project Scope

The scope of this project will be user interviews, usability testing, secondary research, competitive analysis, lo-fi, mid-fi, hi-fi wireframing, and prototyping and testing. The end result will be a new feature as well as supporting features for Wandure.

Phase 1 | Empathize

Before even attempting to come up with potential solutions to online dating, the first step is doing extensive research! What pain points do people have when on dating apps and looking for matches? What are the online dating trends and how do they affect our work? As someone who has never used any dating apps or websites, it is both intimidating and exciting to jump into the world of online dating. The methods of research we will conduct are: User Interviews, Competitive Analysis, and Secondary Research.

User Interviews

There were a few common complaints about the experience of finding love online, but there were also some great disparities. I interviewed a total of 7 participants - 3 males, 4 females, who ranged between the ages of 20 - 40, and also ranged greatly in professions. Unfortunately the sample size is mostly heterosexual, so the results will more likely reflect the experiences of straight men and women. The following findings do not give us any clear indication of what dating pain points LGBTQ individuals experience. Here is a full view of my User Interview Findings.

After conducting these user interviews, the 2 main archetypes that stood out within the online dating world were: just-here-for-fun daters, and ready-to-settlers. Most were ready to settle, so that is the archetype that we will be designing for primarily.

Secondary Research

Now that we’ve conducted user interviews, we can start to solidify any hypotheses we have formed through reading and watching studies and articles shedding light on dating apps. The questions we’ll attempt to answer in our research are: What are the current trends in online dating? Who are the main users of the apps? What are the greatest pains for users while using dating apps and sites? How has COVID changed and affected online dating?

Through reading up on the online dating market, it’s clear that the online dating industry is a rapidly evolving space. It is only becoming more and more part and parcel of everyday life in our society. It is no longer something that the minority of people participate in. Rather it is expected that a majority of younger generations (Gen Y and soon most of Gen Z) will have participated in online dating. Here are the most important insights from our secondary research:

Click here for a full view of the secondary research insights

Competitive Analysis

It was pretty clear from speaking to users and from reading up on the industry that Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge are overwhelmingly the most popular and successful apps. I wanted to learn from the best in the game but also use this as a chance to see any areas of opportunity for Wandure to step in.

Phase 2 | Define

Now that we have some answers to our research questions, we can begin to hypothesize: Who is it that we are designing for? What might they be experiencing? What will our main goals be in our design approach? The first step is to define our user. We can’t possibly come up with potential solutions if we don’t know who is at the centre of our design decisions. The best way to do this is through a user persona.

User Persona

As mentioned above, the target user archetype is the ready-to-settler, as they are the most common demographic based on our research, but also the most likely to be frustrated with the experience of dating online.

Empathy Map

We can see how Michael Hayes is being nudged in certain directions by friends, how he goes from hopefulness to hopelessness, and why. We see that because he’s on dating apps at all, he is certainly someone who takes initiative, but also someone who doesn’t do so without being incentivized. We find out that he loves company in the form of new people and is open minded, but also needs some guidance. Understanding him on this level will allow us to make design decisions empathetically. If Michael is open minded, then can we introduce a feature that allows him to express or dig into this? If he needs incentive, how does the way Wandure work currently prevent him from getting on dates?

User Journey

This user journey outlines the following four stages users take on dating apps: Swiping/Liking, Matching, Messaging, and Dating. We then fleshed out the goals, actions, thoughts, and emotions at each stage, as well as touchpoint (where are these stages taking place online and offline?). This user journey in conjunction with our user interviews and secondary research from before, confirms that the area on which we need to put our focus is between messaging and meeting? We now have a question to address: How can we make the experience from messaging to meeting in person more successful?

Project Goals

Now that we have a clearer idea of where our focus needs to be, we can plot out the goals that we will set out to meet for this project. There are three aspects that we need to consider at this stage: technical, business, and the user. There will be a lot of overlap, but individually as well, each aspect is a stakeholder in our design approach. We need to understand what technical goals need to be met to make Wandure a seamless and functioning app. We have to think about the user on a deep level, and make sure we are meeting their needs to find love. And of course, we have to consider that at the end of the day, this is a business, and our solution needs to ensure that sustainability of this model.

Below is a diagram of these goals:

How Long Does It Take For Strangers To Fall In Love?

After identifying the goals for each aspect, it became clear that the common goal and the one that we should strive for is creating an organic flow from swiping to matching to messaging to dating. After much brainstorming, swiping left and right on competitor’s apps, and analogous inspiration, the main new feature I came up with is integrated conversation prompts. This made the most sense to me because:

1. The biggest pain point was conversations fizzling out, and a potential match going to waste because of a dud of a conversation

2. Prompts are already a popular and successful element of the most-liked dating apps (Hinge and Bumble)

3. A great way to deepen a connection between strangers is simply to ask the right questions.

This idea is also largely inspired by the card game We’re Not Really Strangers and the New York Times’ list of 36 Questions to Fall in Love. Both are essentially a list of questions designed to cut small talk between strangers and prove that you can get to know and get to love just about anyone by asking the right questions. The conversation prompt feature is an approach that will allow users to not only break the ice between matches, but also make the connections meaningful.

Feature Roadmap

Referring back to our Competitive Analysis, we will begin to narrow down the features that we should move forward with. This is an inventory of all the features that we discovered on Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, as well as what already existed on Wandure. Unlike the competitive analysis however, we want to rank these features based on priority from 1-4.

As you can see below, the feature roadmap we’ve created gives the list of features, what informed our including it in the inventory, and what priority it holds in our scope (P1 to P4 - 1 being “most important" and 4 being “can wait until later”). The P1 features that we chose are 1. What our competitors shared, and 2. What features best addressed our problem statements regarding making the experience enjoyable and increasing match to date ratio.

Feature Matrix

Building on the feature roadmap, I’ve created a feature matrix. This prioritizes the features we’ve identified based on not just impact, but also considers resources. Although the dream would be to include every feature that we believe to be necessary, in the real world, this is just not possible. Therefore, we have divided the features into 4 sections: Low Impact; High Cost, High Impact; High Cost, Low Impact; Low Cost, and High Impact; Low Cost.

Features that fall within High Impact, Low Cost are no-brainers to include. Features that are Low Impact and High Cost are likely to be cut from our list. Features that are Low Impact; Low Cost, and High Impact, High Cost live in the middle and can be considered on an as-needs basis. The must-have features are the ones that are most focused on creating deeper and more meaningful connections between matches.

Any other features that we focus on should facilitate this goal.

Information Architecture (IA)

Especially since Wandure has a lot of moving parts - (now) an integrated conversation prompt feature, and a date planning feature, there are a lot of logistics and steps that could be forgotten or improperly integrated. Great information architecture will allow us to avoid making extreme changes to our system after the wireframing stage.

Phase 3 | Ideate

Only after synthesizing all our research and insights from the first two phases can we begin to ideate on approaches and solutions. To draw out the most important journey a user would take, I’ve taken the sitemap and distilled it down into this task flow. This will make it easier to understand the user’s goals at each point in the journey, and therefore inform us of what direction we can take to best address these goals. We can refer to this to keep some important questions in mind: What might a new user of Wandure feel when setting up their profile? What might they be thinking when matching on profiles? What barriers might exist to keep them from proceeding from chatting to meeting in person?

Initial Changes

There are some changes I’m making right off the bat based on our empathizing phase. Based on Wandure’s current flow, and our understanding of our ready-to-settle persona, I built out some preliminary wireframes on paper. These wireframes include the new chats prompt feature into the flow, while also improving upon the initial issues identified in Wandure’s current UI and flow. First, refer to the immediate changes below on the current design process:

Paper Sketches

With all these major issues out of the way, I could begin initial paper wire framing:

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

Next, I developed mid-fi wireframes after finalizing the paper sketches. It was important to flesh out the new chat feature on paper before committing to any designs in the mid-fi stage. I also needed to ensure that the biggest glaring issues were addressed before moving to the digital versions.

I took Wandure’s current screens and created each screen of the journey from scratch, while adding any elements that I listed from my changes above. Finally, I added the screens necessary for the conversation prompts feature: a separate “prompts” area, a list of questions with copy explaining how it works, and a confirmation notice.

Phase 5 | Test

In order to verify that our approaches to the problems with the flow, and other areas of frustration we need to test our hi-fidelity prototype. With the prototype above, I conducted usability tests with 4 users to understand any other areas that needed to be reconsidered. For this usability test, I actually added a fifth task. Since I removed the payment process from happening immediately to happening after a date had already been confirmed, I needed to draw the last step out into: planning a date, and paying for a date.

Other than that, the other tasks were the same as the mid-fidelity testing tasks in order to see whether or not the changes that we made make sense. I recruited 4 users to test this prototype. Users ranged from 25 - 30 years of age. 2 testers were female, and 2 were male. 1 was from Long Island, 1 from Edmonton, 2 from Toronto.

Important Insights

After conducting these tests, it was clear that there were some solutions that worked well, but it was also clear that there were some things that still needed reconsidering. I recorded all the important insights and notes from these tests and organized them into an affinity diagram below of my findings. Creating this diagram helped me understand what solutions were successful and can be left for now, and more importantly, helped me see what the biggest pain points were and where I need to focus further changes:

Once I identified these issues, I made the necessary changes to the design below:

1. Sign Up Changes | All users preferred to sign up via phone number. Users felt that Facebook had too much sensitive information that they wouldn’t want a dating app to have access to. For this reason I referred to Uber Eats’ design pattern for sign up. This design prioritizes the phone number sign up, while still allowing users a way to sign up via social media.

2. Chat Design | There are a lot of elements in the chat section, especially as that’s where our main focus has been for changes. I referred again to Uber Eats for a different solution for the progress bar. We didn’t want to remove it, just make it more minimal to take up less real estate and reduce potential cognitive overload.

3. Setting a Date | Users felt that the current set up for choosing a date is quite exclusive and only considerate of people who work 9-5 jobs. All users felt that there should be more customizability, so I reconsidered the date selection process altogether. I referred to Calendly’s date selection process, which allows users to pick a day and respective hours.