A dating app to find lasting love: A UX Case Study
Chemistri is a Dating App that is built to help forge lasting relationships that are based on personality and what one is beyond their pictures. Using voice, text and limited matches, Chemistri is designed to help you find the spark.
But why? Why reinvent it?
I hate myself for this, but I have a love-hate relationship with dating apps. I’m on it for 3 months hopeful that I’ll find my “The One” and I’m off for it the next 3 months. Most of my conversations with matches always involved some amount of lamenting about why dating apps suck. There clearly was a problem.
Research says that men use the app more for casual relationships, and women for friendship and self-validation. With this, we can safely say that dating apps do not exactly serve the purpose of finding serious relationships as they are built on principles of instant gratification.
Hot pictures, quirky takes on worldly matters and quick access to the other person’s time.
Dating apps are broken when you want to find love.
If you’d like to watch a video of me presenting this project, here y’go!
Was this the only problem?
I wanted to be sure that I was not the only one facing this issue of not finding the right person, so I began my quest of asking people about their experience on dating apps (aka user interviews). I soon realised that there was a pattern.
- Over 60% of users interviewed gave importance (in order) to the bio, then looks, and lastly, factors like age and height
- Most users used dating apps when they were bored because they were convinced that nothing good could come out of it. At best, they could expect a casual relationship (some of them were on the lookout for that.)
- Users swiped until their swipe limit was full, or until they were up next at the coffee counter.
With all this being said,
How might we create a safe online environment for forging lasting relationships built on personalities?
A profile page that focuses on what the user has to say
Physical looks become secondary after the initial attraction.
The blurred picture is first so as to pique the user's curiosity and keep them interested in the other person. Users mentioned that at the end of the day, a good date is categorised as such when they have fun with the other person.
Adding a time limit for photo discovery
Apart from text-based content, users can also record answers to prompts that make the connection personal. Audio gives the user a chance to express themselves more openly while giving the other person a glimpse into their actual personality. These prompts are curated based on research papers that list out factors that can qualify whether you will have a successful relationship with someone.
Considering safety concerns, users would still like to make sure that they are not being catfished. By gamifying the experience, we will allow users to “unlock” profile pictures after talking to someone for 72 hours. Users can listen to voice messages or get auto-generated transcripts of the same.
Lastly, introducing limited active matches
Abundance creates a sense of unending gratification. Active matches are capped at 3 at a time. This is limited and one needs to unmatch to match again. It will help limit the mindless matching as well.
Our brains don’t enjoy constant rewards, but a random reward, or a variable reward schedule which keeps people swiping endlessly on traditional dating apps as they may suddenly match with someone “perfect.” We can twist the same principle by limiting matches, so they tend to find joy when they find someone amicable among the 3.
Here is the Framer prototype for Chemistri (it was my first ever prototype and I think I am quite proud of it 😃)
How did I arrive at this solution?
I personally downloaded and studied almost all dating apps on the market. I came up with a list of things that were working and those that weren’t.
- Most apps were built to keep people hooked: They want people to keep coming back, not really delete the app 🙄
- Limited personalisation: Most personalisation features are hidden behind a paywall. Even the most basic ones. Instead, apps could actually keep advanced matching factors behind a paywall.
This project also made use of existing peer-reviewed research papers to validate the solutions. Studies showed that long-term partners are happy in their relationship because each of them was satisfied with their own life even before they started dating. Now, as a dating app, this is something very hard to vet in people as self-reported scores are not always accurate.
The next best thing we could do was tackle the superficiality and abundance of options in dating apps. Evolutionarily speaking, our social circle was limited to 150 people. We would marry, mate and die within this circle. But that is not the case with the advent of the internet. By creating an artificial sense of scarcity or “limitedness”, we can emulate this environment.
Feedback and validating the solution
Feedback is powerful. It pulls us out of our heads and helps us look at something anew. Almost like putting on glasses when you have bad vision. You question your decisions and see why some don’t make sense.
I received feedback in two forms:
- From mentors, peers, and colleagues from work who had the chance to look at my work at different stages
- From Usability Testing using Task Completion as a measure of success
Too many steps
I sought out feedback at several stages and the first stage was during the wireframes. Some of the tutors and peers mentioned that there were far too many steps in the onboarding process and they would likely not finish it IRL. I had split the steps up so that it seemed easier when one made incremental progress. But it did not work with the users.
So, I combined all three steps and chunked them into one screen and did this wherever it made sense. I had to rearrange the sequence in a few places so this could be achieved.
50% Task Completion Rate
I did Usability Testing to test product desirability and task completion. It did not make sense to test anything else with a prototype that was designed for a happy path. Surprisingly, even with this, there was only a 50% completion rate as I had missed out on one small detail.
I had missed designing the “profile unlock timer” which did not let people know how much time was left before they unlocked the full profile.
So how do I know when I’ll unlock the profile?
Success Metrics
If this was a real product release, I would want to track these metrics to validate the success and use of the product:
- Daily/Monthly Active Users
- Session Length
- User Flows
A question arises, how would we monetize the app?
We could consider monetizing the app through features like advanced filters and more accurate matching. Another model we can employ is from existing apps: pushing the profile to the top.
Lessons and more
- Iterations create beautiful work
- Stick to familiar patterns and do something out-of-the-box only when it is a defining feature. Too many new things mean too many unknowns.
- Projects with users’ data are very complicated and there are too many factors to consider
- Sign Up processes where a lot of user data is gathered can be tricky and must be designed carefully.
Next Steps
I would want to research more on how these matching algorithms work in real products and consider making a no-code app if possible.
I had the chance to talk to the founder of a new-age dating app and discussed this project. He found the concept grounded in some facts and was considering implementing the “limited matches” concept in his MVP. I think it would be cool to see how that fares and what insights it could provide.
