Case study: UniDates, a dating app for colleges
My design process from user research to prototype evaluation.
Author：Michael O’Hara
Introduction to UniDates
My idea is a dating app for colleges. This would mean you would only find people who were in the same college as you on the app. It would work by the person selecting which university or institution they are in and then entering their student number as proof that they attend the selected university. We would need to come to an agreement with colleges to share students’ information who use the app, which is similar to how UniDays (an online student discount website) do it. From the information given from the student number, we would also know which year the student is in and what course they are studying. This information would show up on their profile.
The student would then choose which year group they were interested in e.g. Year 1-Year 3 and which gender they were interested in. The student would be shown the profiles of people in their selected category, and would be given the option to press an ‘Interested’ or ‘Not Interested’ button, similar to the app Tinder. If two people are both interested in one another, then they will be notified and will be able to chat to each other within the app. At first this app would be made for Irish institutions, but if successful it would expand into other countries such as the UK and the US.
I am an Entrepreneurship student and do not have much knowledge on which technologies are used as we have not studied this, but I researched which technologies Tinder use and they include Amazon (Elastic Load Balancing), Cloudflare, JavaScript, Ghost, GoDaddy SSL. I could not find any information on how UniDays access college information, but would look into this further.
Target Market- The target market for this business would be all students in colleges all around Ireland, and then the world if it was successful. This would include mature students. Obviously it will be aimed at single students and hopefully it would seem like an appealing idea to them.
UX Vision- we would hope to develop a good relationship with our customers and that all user touch points would be a smooth and enjoyable experience for the consumer. We would work hard to ensure that our brand is seen as a fun and friendly brand, that offers users something extra than other dating websites or apps, by having the college only aspect.
Contextual Inquiry
For this assignment I conducted 5 interviews of students from colleges. Among these students where my friends who are single, 3 boys and 2 girls. I planned this by organizing to meet up with them individually as they all live in my area. I asked them questions about dating and how they found dating apps, aiming to gather as much information as I could about these topics. I then introduced them to the idea of UniDates and asked them about this. I then did up a journey map on one of my interviewees.
User Profile
I chose two user personas for this assignment, a male post-graduate student aged 35 and a female business undergraduate student. The 35 year old male wanted to find people his own age in college who he could relate to and spend time with in college, and found it difficult to find people his own age on other dating apps who went to college. He would benefit from UniDates as it would be a quick and easy way to find other post-graduate students. The female business undergraduate wanted to find a boyfriend who also studied business in her year. She wanted them to be in the same lectures and do the same work. UniDates would benefit her as she could find a male of this description by using the apps features of knowing which course and year the person is in.
Creating the experience
Norman’s design principles on Unidates
1. Visibility- Yes and no, you can only see it if you have it open on your device.
2. Feedback- At the moment it is in development, but once it is up and running it will be performing criteria searches for the users and offering a platform for dating and chatting.
3. Affordance- You use it by downloading the application and entering your college details and signing in. You the chose your criteria and results of people matching these criteria will show up.
4. Mapping- At the moment I am in the design stages and trying to figure out the best way to approach the app, but I could make this a very successful app with the right planning.
5. Constraint- I cannot go into the development of the app as I do not have the knowledge or funds available.
6. Consistency- I have seen similar apps to this before but none that combine college and dating as a way of exclusivity.
KPI’s- Key Performance Indicators are used to evaluate the success of an organization in meeting its objectives over a period of time.
Googles HEART Framework for UniDates
Sketching- Crazy 8's
Flowchart for interaction with UniDates app
Screen Mockups
Prototype
I made a prototype of the app on Mockingbot, which I have included a link to here:
https://mockingbot.com/app/eIU7stNCqQ680ZzpR03eozGYwsDUwaf
The code for access is: PD309.
Evaluation
User testing
Iteration
Based on the feedback from my user testing I believe there is interest in my app but a lot of things I may need to work on the further differentiate my app from others like it. I will look to put more emphasis on the fact that it is just for people in the same college. I will use this USP to try and drive attention to my app. I feel I will need to do this if the app is able to compete in the market.
