Sparkle is an end to end startup case study project which takes a fresh look at modern dating apps.  Understanding paint points, ideating to solve problems and thinking how these solutions lead to features which can help users find a true connection. Along with wire framing, testing, competitive analysis and constantly ideating and iterating I designed a brand.

People these days meet people more often online and less face to face all in the hopes of finding a connection whether it is for a long lasting romantic connection or something casual. There are multiple personas in this quest, however this case study looks at people that value a connection in any way or form. After talking to friends or people even in bars and scratching the surface and then going deeper into user interviews these are the main problems of current dating apps. I wanted to understand first how people interact with current dating apps, a closer ethnographic outlook on their behaviour to see where things can be done better.

The personas show some of the dating pain points and types of target audience. From the wider spectrum of personas using dating apps today everyone can find their desires shifting somewhere between "strictly physical" and between "long lasting relationship". It was important to position sparkle as an app for more meaningful connections not necessarily for long lasting relationships but not striking that out either. Therefore Sparkle may not be for an audience that's strictly into complete physical interaction.

Before ideating on potential solutions it was important to take a deeper look into the current user journey of online dating apps. Some of these feelings, actions and thoughts were expressed while talking and interviewing people and from my own experience as well. There seems to be a cycle that occurs when people are on the app and just stay on it browsing, swiping, potentially talking or just collecting matches. Are current dating apps designing dating apps so you could stay on them? Obviously there's a handful of hang outs/dates that occur eventually after this process but why is it tedious? Why users get underwhelmed and unbothered most of the time? Are there too many people for us to review in order to get to one that might seem worth our while? How can we make this experience less superficial and faster towards the end goal, which is meeting. So users can finally test their connection live, see if they like each other and find out for themselves.

To understand what is needed in each step of the app, it's important to visualise the user's steps and the story and sub tasks in each point.

These wireframes were for the older design I created and initially created very low fidelity wireframes to test concepts mostly and general content blocks to understand what the user gravitates to more.

Goal: Getting 5 user reactions to low-medium fidelity wireframes and key featuresPresenting users with ML based matches, date based suggestions and what info is ideal to present once looking for a possible match. I also asked about possibly have a voice memo instead of an image as a first point of interaction, once a user is presented with a potential match.

The matching features were iterated upon several times. Initially I have designed for a conceptual futuristic machine learning based matching feature that takes into account two things. One is text as input regarding the personality traits a user values and the other is looks/visuals which takes into account photo/facial features a user is mostly interested in. However, after iterating once more in the concern of creating a better and unbiased design (even though the user is the one feeding input to an unbiased system) I iterated on a different approach which is slightly more open ended and gives freedom to the user as well.

To understand what is needed in each step of the app, it's important to visualise the user's steps and the story and sub tasks in each point.

Mapping out the hierarchy of the app with the main pages and sub content blocks within those to show how the app is built.

The flow of the app from a new user signup showcasing on boarding and also an existing user.

After many iterations the main features are:

I learned a lot from working on this project. There were many iterations and cycles in the ideation phase regarding the final features. I really enjoyed the branding strategy and the iteration where solutions were needed and then found and again iterated upon. Generally, it may be daunting however in discomfort new ideas and routes grow.