Process

As a first phase, I did research, where I explored the global market of dating apps and narrowed it down to market research for the two most significant competitors of the start-up in South Asia. Secondary analysis revealed users' struggles, why they abandoned most of the dating apps, and what were their struggles and so-called turnoffs. To learn more about the "why", I researched user testimonials available online and created a few experiments. For the research methods, I used the observation (including participant observation) method, qualitative, secondary and experimental methods. Choosing these methods gave me lots of flexibility and easy access to conducting my research and helped me establish cause-and-effect relationships.

The research and experiments revealed the sensitivity among users in terms of the app’s location feature accuracy and customer support, both parts of the customer experience. Thanks to the analysis, we learned a lot about the segmentation and dating app development hurdles, branding and customer care that helped us expand our look at the design. Afterwards was the time to review the UI design for each detail, leaving inquisitive questions for every element. All design choices were discussed and questioned in terms of functionality.

Meanwhile, after each round of revisions, I went back to testing popular dating apps and their design for about a week, after which I returned to the design files and left my suggestions, questions and comments regarding the UX and UI aspects of the app. We changed one of the functionalities for more intuitiveness and precision for more straightforward development implementation. During this process, many questions were going back and forward between us: the designers and the development team, to solidify specific design integrations. I also have learned that no matter how small the budget is prototypes, should be created and tested with the users. Next time I would propose constructing a small user scenario to test the design with a small group of users.