Pawsible is a dating app built on the belief that dog owners hold a shared common ground of values and more–from a morality viewpoint to the lifestyle of a dog parent. It creates a sense of trustworthiness and safety within these commonalities, and opens up chances for people to find a significant other who shares similar interests and qualities.
Barriers, whether they be social or personal, restrict and limit the users from truly engaging and finding the desired relationships. For this project, I focused on one goal:
How can an app find a better connecting point among the users, so they can more happily arrive at their ideal relationships?
I began this project by deciding on the research procedures to use. I started with gathering publicly available data (secondary research), and proceeded to direct research (primary research). For my primary research, I prioritized qualitative data to understand the source of the pain point I aim to solve.
Dating apps have become a ubiquitous phenomenon for people in the digital era to branch out and search for their partners. Each dating app has its own characteristics, and so as the individuals using these variety of online dating platforms. Everyone has their personal purposes, searching for the idealistic other that mesmerize them. I gathered quantitative data from Pew Research Center about individuals' experiences online and Reddit posts that mention similar aspects of online dating experiences.
Dating app users believe that online dating leaves them feeling more frustrated than hopeful
Online dating often includes instances where individuals must make themselves noticeable in a large pool of others who either accept or reject them after quick assessments. In this process, some may experience a boost in confidence while some may not. The fast-paced approval/denial nature of dating apps impact users' self-esteem and lead them to feel more dispirited during or after the usage.
Checking one's physical appearance and their ideal relationship type are considered necessary aspects for online daters.
Users quickly navigate through dozens of potential partners in order to find the person they would like to get to know more of. To do so, they look at certain aspects or qualities of other daters. In the beginning stages of fast assessments, they consider photos of daters online, and further search for areas of commonalities including type of relationship they aspire, household situation, hobbies or interests, religion beliefs, etc. Before having a more personal interaction with the individual, these factors are important for users to make general assumptions of the other purely based on information provided within the platforms.
Online daters generally believe that embellishment is a very common part of the online dating experience.
As positively as they experience the online dating platforms, a majority of the users expressed that lying is a common feature of the online environment. One possible reasoning of this can be in order to appear more desirable and stand out in a big pool of daters, although it does not justify the act. Aside from lying to seem more desirable, significant amount of the users characterized scam accounts and receiving sexually explicit content (messages or images) they did not ask for as other prevalent occasions online.
In many postings in Reddit online dating pages, people mention being deceived by other daters who pretend to be interested in serious relationships but are actually playing mind games. The lack of straightforwardness frustrates the users, leaving them to feel hurt and skeptical of people's intentions in online dating world. Additionally, many daters face challenges in navigating the adequate timing of asking someone out; difficulty of balancing getting to know someone without taking too long, which can lead to the loss of interest, is another major factor that online daters struggle on a daily basis. Encountering mix signals and lack of trust exacerbate the users' feelings of frustration and demoralization.
I conducted user interviews with 6 dating app users who have used current dating apps and have gone gone at least 1 date in the past year.
Deriving from the user interviews, I categorized findings into an affinity map, grouped based on current themes.
Considering the recurring themes of the affinity map and previous research data guided me to come up with the key insights about the current situation of online dating experience.
Not everyone on dating apps has the same relationship goals. Some users are looking for casual encounters or short-term flings, while others are seeking serious, long-term relationships. It can be challenging to find someone who shares a similar intention, and experiencing mismatched goals can lead to frustration and disappointment in users' experiences.
"After engaging in multiple interactions that explicitly wanted sexual relationships or led me on without clarity, I am hesitant to give myself another shot to go on another date because I am looking for a specific type of relationship. I decided it isn't worth going through all the hassles to chase after something that I don't think exists."
Effective communication is crucial for building meaningful relationships. Online dating often requires strong communication skills to convey your personality, interests, and values. Misunderstandings and difficulty in gauging the other person’s intentions can hinder the smooth development of a serious relationship.
“It is hard to keep the conversation active from being matched to actually go on a first date with another person. Many times, I struggle to maintain exciting conversations. Conversations turn dry quickly, without significant improvements, and eventually they die down like it never even happened.”
Online dating, in contrast to traditional way of meeting another, is in absence of the physical interaction on a regular basis until a specific point. Online dating purely requires both ends to put in adequate effort virtually in order for any interaction to develop into relationships. Many devote themselves to impress the other from the dating pool, which may lead to actions deviating from how they innately are or lying about certain things. Concerns about the authenticity of profiles can lead to hesitation in further engaging and grow into a barrier that hinders users' willingness to open up to others.
“After hearing my friends’ experiences where they meet a completely different person from what’s described online, it’s hard to open up to someone from a fear of engaging my time and effort with someone who could possibly be faking themselves.”
While many efforts have been made towards gender equality, traditional gender norms among the users still exist in the online dating world. Men tend to feel the pressure is upon them to “make the first move,” while women tend to be more cautious about meeting in person and asking for dates themselves. And as men ask out first more frequently, they further feel the pressure to pay, which can be a worsening factor to their overall experience. The fear of deviating from this social norm is a strong motivator of users’ behaviors.
"Every time I go out on a date through these apps, I am always pressured to ask and pay for the first date, and I can’t afford to continuously do so when I’m not sure whether they will lead to successful relationships that I want."
There obviously are people who find their ideal relationships smoothly, have many successful interactions, and thus are content with their experience within the online dating space. However, there still are a significant portion of online daters who struggle to be seen, find what they want, and enjoy their journey through the digital world. The main reason for such, I believe, is the mixture of differences (ideals, relationship goals, etc.) that lead to ambiguity and frustration to those who are looking for the right person with similar, serious intentions. As a solution, I wanted to design an online dating platform for those who are seeking long-term relationships, but more specifically, a dating platform for dog-owners and dog-lovers.
Dog owners/lovers naturally have significant grounds of commonality, from their interest and general personality (empathetic, caring, etc.) to their lifestyle as a whole. Of course, one raising a dog does not mean that they are 100% a genuine person, but in the grand scheme of things, pet owners generally may have more moralistic and philanthropic traits than those who do not bond well with animals--or at least would believe so for themselves. An app exclusive for dog-owners have other possible benefits to the users: there is an instant topic of interest that both ends are passionate about, which provides a firmer ground for the interactions to develop upon it. Furthermore, dog-owners dedicate a good portion of their lives to walk their dogs to help them exercise and relieve stress. This factors favorably in the developmental stage of relationships, as it creates a possible environment for online daters to casually learn more about each other without much pressure on either ends. Walking dogs together, it allows daters to see and show the more personally aspects, communicate in natural environments, while also giving their dogs an amazing chance to interact with other dogs and move around. Rather than putting a barrier of pressure before the first legitimate date even happens, Pawsible allows its daters to start out smoothly and naturally, assisting them to develop into profound relationships.
Considering the key insights and gathered information, I created 2 distinct personas that visualize the behavioral and attributional patterns. It was necessary to have both a male and female persona as distinct gender/social norms still exist for both genders in heterosexual relationships in online dating platforms. Images of individuals were gathered from iStock.
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Taking the selected solutions from my ideation, I created a storyboard that visualizes Alyssa’s experience using the proposed feature. This allowed me to focus on the user journey first, rather than jump into design elements.
Envisioning user's journey while using Pawsible, I created a user flow from the beginning to the end, arriving at successful and happy relationships. I want Pawsible to minimize users' experience of frustration, mistrust, and misleadingness in online dating, by alleviating the pressure upon them during match making and going on first and consequent dates. As users of Pawsible will be dog owners, Pawsible provides an opportunity to build casual, low-pressure grounds for further relationships with the presence of their pets--via casual walks and grabbing a quick coffee with the other while doing so, for example.
Using my User Flow as a guide, I created wireframes for each screen with paper and pen. I then translated the sketches onto Figma.
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Once I was satisfied with the wireframes, I began adding the color and imagery to create a high-fidelity prototype. It was important to select an appropriate color palette that will ensure a welcoming and affectionate atmosphere for Pawsible's branding identity. I refined each screen with a consistent design pattern to make the features integrate as smoothly as possible. Images of individuals and dogs are gathered from iStock.
In the span of 3 weeks for this project, I learned greatly about the depth of a UX project and intricate efforts necessary from the start to finish. Finding a solution to a problem was a challenging process, but trying to look at the problem from multiple perspectives taught me valuable insights moving forward. Interviewing individuals allowed me to view dating apps more holistically, enabling me to find common pain points among current dating app users to solve.
Focusing more on the problem/solution rather than design aspects encouraged me to think more fluidly about how the user's experience can be improved, and further allowed me to create a storyboard and truly immerse myself into the project.
Working in a solo project challenged and motivated me to bring out the best of myself. Struggling through a problem by myself pushed me to think more deeply, from a wider perspective, in order to avoid the solution becoming too narrow-minded. However, as a committed dog-lover, I enjoyed every step along the way of Pawsible! I am currently trying to find software engineers and mobile app developers to cooperate with and further develop this idea to reality.