Case study: Creating a new feature for Bumble BFF
Enabling group meetings with suggested activities in order to make the “new-friends date” smoother and more meaningful.
Details
Brief: Incorporate new features into the existing platform based on user needs.
Deliverables: research and high-fidelity interactive prototype.
Design Sprint: 4 days part-time.
Team: Solo.
App: Bumble App BFF mode(site)
Bumble BFF
Bumble is a well-known dating app, which competes directly with Tinder. What makes it different is the fact that the app has 3 modes: date (for romantic meetings), bff (for meeting new friends) and bizz (for networking). The brand positions itself as an app for meaningful relationships, contrary to Tinder, which is perceived as an app for casual dates.
Bff and dating modes work exactly the same, except that users may not select the gender of their matches on bff mode. Women may only match with women, and men with men.
The user creates their profile with picture and BIO, he/she can choose some questions to answer and some filters for their possible bff matches. Swiping right means you like that person, left means you dislike. If another user also swipe right towards you, you are allowed to start a conversation.
Discovery
During the primary desk research, I discovered some problems users face when using bumble bff. Some of them were:
- Crafting a bio for friendship
- 24h to answer
- “We care so much about an image rather than getting to know someone.”
- You get only a few matches
- “The rejection felt honestly worse than dating”
- “It is a part-time job”
- Awkwardness and insecurity
I decided to dive deeper in the users’ minds to discover the root of those problems and see the big picture covering the use of ‘apps to make friends’. That’s why I launched a survey about friendship for people older than 18. The survey had 8 questions about the last friendship they made and was answered by 65 people in 3 hours.
Since I had little time for the process, I used all the information I got on the internet (YouTube videos showing Bumble bff experiences and blogs). I also interviewed some people who already used Bumble bff. They were immigrants, digital nomads, travellers or people who want to increase their groups of friends.
Those interviewees stoped using bumble bff for the following reasons:
- Having conversations with one person and trying to meet later seemed more time-consuming than meeting many people in one common activity.
- Bumble focuses on the photos of the users. For these people it doesn’t make sense, since the appearance doesn’t matter when it comes to friendship.
- Those contacts in Bumble seemed superficial. They felt like it was difficult to build meaningful connections.
How did people make their last friendship?
Through the survey, I discovered what are the most important factors when it comes to making new friends, what makes a friend be perceived as a best friend, how those friendships happened and more.
In the image above all the results gathered with the survey can be checked:
- Approximately 88% of the people made their last friendship in a group activity.
- They said the best way to make friends is sharing daily life and sharing experiences in person. Because it results in empathy, they can discover affinities among them and makes cope with life more easily.
- In a friendship, rather than physical appearance, people look for: honesty, trust, loyalty and partnership.
- In a best friend, people search for: reliability, presence, acceptance, support and partnership.
The assumptions above helped me to design a solution to the main problem question:
People complain about the act of making friends becoming more difficult as they get older. How do people actually make friends as an adult?
I decided to look for apps that promise the same things: helping to make new friends. I used Meet Up as inspiration, since their main goal isn’t helping making friends, but discovering nice events and experiences in the city around a chosen topic, and as a consequence, people meet new friends.
Next Door app is about making contacts within the user’s neighborhood, and Yubo app focuses on teenagers. The target audience for this case study was set as expats, travellers and adults who want to make new friends, that’s why both of the apps (Yubo and Next Door) were excluded from the analysis.
Hey Vina app is focused on women, providing easy interest quizzes and send users directly to meeting suggestion; Friender app focus on people’s interests and affinities; and Friended app provides some quick games to ice-breaking.
Benchmarking takeaway:
- stimulate activities,
- help to break the ice,
- discover affinities.
Delivery
The scenario is a recovering city amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as we face now in Lisbon, where people can meet with some limits of people and circulation.
I checked the current user flow:
- After login in, users choose among the Bumble modes: date, bff and bizz.
- They can only meet people of the same gender.
- They create a profile and have many questions to answer.
- They fill up filter boxes and choose the “kind” of people they want to meet.
- After matching, they discover they have only 24 hours to answer, that’s why some people provide other social media contacts in case they miss the deadline.
I started sketching some possibilities:
Solutions
Disclaimer: I considered users who had already filled up the filter boxes and shared their location to the full functionality of the app.
Based on the research on the users’ needs and desires, I propose for Bumble App to stimulates connections, enabling users to invite a group of other users to join for an advised activity in an easy way.
How does it work?
The user decides to invite one person of a group, then chooses what king of activity he/she would like to do, the day and time, write a small invitation text and select how many people he/she would like to invite.
The app assists in this task by providing some places to go with their information, then spread the invitation with place, time and further information to other users who fit the primary user filters. People can confirm their attendance or not. Those people who confirmed can start a conversation in the chat to talk about details or chitchatting, giving them the opportunity to break the ice.
Layout
In order to follow the Bumble app Style guide, I studied their specificities, created a style tile in order to follow the same pattern.
Tests
The prototype was tested by users with success. They understood the concept and completed tasks easily. Some Iterations made after the test were placed at the bottom in the confirmation screen and an adjust in the tab bar.
Now it is your turn
Can you invite 3 new friends to the MAAT Museum in Lisbon?
If you have any trouble during your experience, please let me know in the comments. To check the prototype well, select “fit — scale down to fit” in the options (upper-left corner of your screen).
You can check a video of the prototype working on a mobile below:
Next steps
- Designing an option for people to do online meetings, such as playing online games.
- To create a new icon (instead of the bee in the tab bar) to designate this feature and show its function more clear (based on feedback).
Dear reader,
This piece came late, I know, but here it is. I hope you enjoyed joining me in this journey of discovering how friendships are possibly made in adulthood.
Please, let me know if you liked it by giving me some claps, or commenting on what I can do better next time.
See you next week!
