Clean slate
The initial brief was “keep the membership list, throw the rest away and start over”.
Further discussions set some other parameters.
- The app should continue to be explicitly Irish-focused as there were no other serious Irish-based contenders.
- We should continue the theme of friendship – this was not simply a tool for finding a partner but should take a broader view of connecting people and fostering friendships.
- We should take a lighthearted approach to set a relaxed tone.
The live site was fixed-width targeting 1024×768.
Research
Interviews
Interviews with five current members of Another Friend and five current users of other dating apps gave us a number of insights to work with.
Social Network
Active users of Another Friend were exclusively using it for the chat room where they would keep in touch with the friends they had made. We saw this as validation that the ‘friendship’ theme had value.
Geographic Focus
Across Ireland, the words “Tinder” and “dating app” were practically synonymns. Tinder was seen as “the only option”, even though users did not trust or like the platform.
Tinder Fatigue
All interviewees recognised that while physical appearance was important, turning dating into a game-of-swipes was not in the best interests of the user.
Competitor Analysis
I created trial accounts on the five leading dating apps:
I used two personae while interacting in order to get both male and female perspectives.
Geographic Focus
Members in your area is the key success metric for any dating app. Plenty of Fish had only seven members in my city. Of the five, only Tinder had enough members local to me to make it worthwhile.
Conversational Value
There were two main interaction types. In “fishing,” the entire value lay in arranging a meeting — if that looked unlikely, the conversation ended quickly. In “craic” interactions the conversation itself was the value.
Ideation
Prototyping
The core of the app was based on the concept of Match, Mingle and Meet. The “swipe-game” is now the expected pattern in dating, but we wanted to dilute it a little. Similarly, a “super-like” of some form is expected functionality which was introduced in the form of a “Crush”. Chats are listed under “Meet” where they expire after seven days of bi-directional inactivity – this somewhat mitigates the problem of “ghosting”, as after a week of no contact the ghost disappears.
The wireframes were created in Axure RP, a design tool that prioritises interactivity over visual fidelity and extremely fast for ideating on complex applications.
Integrating the full profile into the Mingle screen gives the user enough context for a considered swipe.
UI Design
We guerilla tested the UI as we iterated the design. The three core pages were immediately understood from the start, although details like the chat expiry were confusing to some test participants.
Social Transactions
The client wanted a PAYG model alongside the subscription model. I suggested we try to monetise the conversation itself, but frame it as an online version of “Can I buy you a drink?”.
“Buying her a chat” from the perspective of a premium user. We used this dual-view format to sketch up much of the conversation flow logic.
PAYG purchases were card or Paypal. We considered in in-app social currency but this was beyond the scope of the MVP.
This is the transaction as seen from the viewpoint of a premium user who has offered a chat to a free user.
Web UI
As with most dating apps, this was mobile-first, however we did also spec the desktop webapp layouts.
Migration
Existing users are migrated onto the new database pre-launch. They are sent a temporary password which they can use for access. A shortened onboarding flow then collects the missing profile data.
Tone of voice
We were looking for the sweet spot where Flirtt was irreverant, lighthearted and Irish, but not corny and annoying. To find that spot we would push the language until it felt wrong, then pull it back a little.
Onboarding Accelerator
Onboarding is a long multi-step process in any dating app. Importing the data from other platforms can shorten the process considerably.
Rebrand
Once all the flows, the screens and the requirements doc were complete, the client decided to pivot the brand while keeping the structure intact. A new identity was produced by Dublin brand consultants The Pudding and the application was reskinned accordingly.
The project is currently paused following the rebrand and subsequent funding challenges on the client side.
