Retrospective: Snapchat Entering the Dating Market
Timeline: 10 Days | Role: UX Designer/Visual Lead | Team: 3 Designers
Deliverables: Research Report, Comparative Analysis, User Interview & Contextual Inquiry Synthesis, Journey Map, Personas, User Flows, User Stories, Integration Flows, High Fidelity Mockups & Iterations, Usability Test Findings, Annotated Wireframes, Interactive Prototype
Client Overview
Snapchat is an ephemeral photo/video sharing app where users are free to be themselves through moments captured in real time. They are the main player in the social media market to cater to people’s desire for privacy through vanishing captured moments.
Their user base is mostly Millennials (ages 18–34), representing 60% of Snapchat’s monthly U.S usage.They built their strong presence in the market by creating a brand that people trust to be less risky in the long term and by providing a minimalistic mobile-first design that is easy to use.
The Challenge
Currently online dating apps allow people to match with others by allowing users to curate their own profiles with the images and information they feel best represents themselves and what they are seeking.
Through means of self-interest many users have found ways to misrepresent themselves with outdated images, editing features, and bios that aren’t always truthful, to facilitate their best possible chances of matching with people. This has caused an overall issue in which people now find it difficult to trust dating apps because they are not sure that “what they see [through online dating] is what they get [in real life]”.
Solution
Snapchat is at the opportune moment where they can utilize their current user base and brand perception to enter the online dating industry by:
- Taking advantage of its video-messaging platform and vast millennial user base
- Leveraging their reputation for providing raw and real time content and addressing the safety and privacy concerns of their users
The Squad
In the 2 week sprint to address and design for this opportunity I was fortunate to have two other wonderful UX designers by my side striving for the same goal.
My Role
As the visual design lead, I made sure everything from the content in the presentation to the interaction/visual design of the Snapmatch app stayed true to Snapchat’s fun and colorful personality. In addition, I took led the creation of the journey map, personas, and comparative research.
I also assisted in the creation of screeners, interviews, brainstorming and creation of the prototype.
Our Design Process
In order to create a well designed, well researched product we loosely followed the double diamond approach in order to capitalize on the 4 distinct phases of the design process.
DISCOVER
Comparative Research
We surveyed the landscape of top dating apps out there to see how they tackled key concerns such as privacy, verification, and age restrictions.
Key Findings
- A majority of apps focus on a different matching mechanism, but they don’t have a solution for users misrepresenting themselves through images or bios
- Some apps encourage users to start conversations through timed matches and loyalty programs
- Facebook is the main API for log in when it comes to verifying user identities
User Screener & Interviews
User Screener
We surveyed 72 people ages 16–43 to help us find interviewees that were avid Snapchat users and avid online daters.
- 89% of respondents were between the ages of 18–34
- Ages 18–22 showed they were the most frequent Snapchat users however they also had the least experience online dating out of all age groups
- Ages 23–34 showcased the most usage of online dating and had a more even spread of Snapchat usage
The screener helped us categorize our interviewees to get information about:
- Avid online daters and their experiences
- Avid Snapchat users and why they love using it over other messaging apps
- The drivers behind the large discrepancy in how frequent the 18–22 yr olds use snapchat vs. how little they used online dating
User Interviews
Through the interviews we were able to spot key trends to guide our design solutions.
Users are looking for:
- 8/9 users — An experience that resembles meeting someone in real life.
- 7/9 users — To see personality & interests through content not through what they describe in bios.
- 7/9 users — They like to share and see things that are not curated and edited but rather captured as they happen to feel as if they are experiencing it first hand.
Journey of Online Daters
The journey map helped guide us to better understand main frustrations and emotions users had with different stages of using dating apps. We found it useful to keep the needs of the users alive during the design process.
DEFINE
Data Synthesis & Personas
We used affinity mapping to synthesize our interviews and create three distinct personas and user stories of how the app would be used.
Primary Persona: Danny cares about Personality, Common Interests
Secondary Persona: Tina cares about Up to date photos, Credibility, Validation
Tertiary Persona: Fiona cares about Credibility, Unaltered photos
User Flows
To help prioritize features, we created user flows for how the users should expect to interact with dating app based on research of interactions they are familiar with and/or hope to see.
Feature Prioritization
We prioritized our features using the MOSCOW method to help focus our scope and develop the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that would best satisfy all 3 personas.
Features we MUST include:
- Identity verification through Facebook to provide additional security and restrict minors from using the app
- Option to add to dating story from the camera screen for accessibility
- Visibility to age, location, and occupation on the match screen
- Setting preferences by distance, sexual preference, and age
- Notifications of instant matches as they occur
- Direct conversation with matches
IDEATE
Positioning Strategy
In order to determine whether the online dating platform would best function as an in-app feature (such as Discover) or a companion app, we created integration flows and a comparison of both versions.
We determined that based on the limitations of screen space, current navigation hierarchy and the reasons listed below, building a companion app would best showcase the entire app’s full functionality.
DEVELOP
Design Charrette
We utilized design charrette and timeboxing to sketch out possible ideas for each individual screen state required to carry out the user’s main tasks. This enabled us to finalize the designs we wireframed to test with our users.
Usability Testing
Having built out the 1st version of the app to test through InVision, we conducted the usability test by having each user walk through our primary persona — Danny’s user story which uncovered great insights to guide iterations.
Iterations
Most notably, all 9 users found the “It’s a Snapmatch!” animation delightful and the integration between the two apps to be seamless.
Final Design
After incorporating all iterations from usability testing we finalized the wireframes and used Flinto to prototype the animations necessary for the product to function most effectively.
Annotated Wireframes
Although we focused on Danny’s specific journey in the prototype, we thought through what the onboarding experience would be like for new Snapmatch users in the wireframes below as well.
Next Steps
