Trill
The Dating App
Project Brief
Dating platforms are becoming more and more popular with people to find dates and even future spouses. The dating app market is very competitive. In fact, finding the right person for yourself is not as easy as people think. Users of these platforms have to deal with things like scams, uninspiring conversations, fake profiles, or old photos. As a result, our client wanted to create a dating app that enables better connections by encouraging people to share their experiences, interests, and make plans together so that users can build a strong relationship through the app.
Project Overview
Platform
iOS, Android
Role
Research, Design, Project Manager
Tools
Figma, InVision, Pen, Paper, Jira
What is Trill?
TRILL= True+Real
TRILL is a new dating app that aims to create meaningful connections by encouraging users to create events, plans, share interests, and go on fun dates in order to build a strong foundation for any relationship.
Project Context
Our client worked with an agency before bringing the project to my team. They helped him with the research part, established brand strategy, and studied the current market. Therefore, our designs are based on the provided research
The app is currently being built and should be released by December 2020.
Define our audience
The dating market is normalized. According to Leap-the agency, 80% of Americans of all ages feel that dating apps are acceptable, useful ways to find a partner. There is no lack of potential users for new dating apps.
They provided us 4 different types of users in the dating market. Our team decided to choose the “On & Off Dater” as our primary persona because this user is exploring the app and looking for a potential relationship.
On & Off Dater
• Access to the ‘dating pool’ – “see who is out there now”
• Potential relationship
Curious Dabbler
• Fun experience
• No expectation about finding a partner
Seeking Serious
• Serious partner
• Long term relationship
Persistent Masochist
• A quality online dating experience
• Better luck than had in the past
Visual analysis and insights
We decided to do a visual competitive analysis among direct and indirect competitors. We wanted to visually see the way those apps connect with their audience and understand the market on our own before brainstorming.
Direct Competitors
These are competitors that dominate the dating app marketplace. Her and Hey! Vina has event feature within their apps
Indirect Competitors
Meetup has events and Instagram has similar interface that we want to look at
Insights
- None of the apps used the hamburger menu. Even with a lot of pages to navigate to, the apps found ways to avoid the dreaded hamburger.
- While Her relied on other apps for event hosting, Hey VINA built the flow into their app. Hey Vina will be a great model for Trill.
- Most apps used illustrations and micro animations for user engagement.
- All provided the ability to skip a user, either by tap “x” or swipe.
- Most apps require 10+ onboarding screens to get set up..
- 86% of apps have bottom tab navigation
How can we help?
Once we understand our primary Persona’s motivations and concerns, we created a Journey Map for that persona. Creating this Journey Map allowed us to really empathize with the primary persona and see opportunities for Trill to fit into their lifestyle.
What we decided to solve for
Provided Persona
The on and off dater, needs an app that helps him take online connections offline and create meaningful connections so that he can grow his community, connect with nearby people, and take part in fun events.
For an app to be perfect, does it need to include every feature?
Must Have
• Inclusive gender options
• Identify genders served profile
• SMS sign-up
• Name, gender, age required at sign-up
• At least one photo required
• Swipe navigation option
• Ability to like user
• Comprehensive profile filters
• Ability to block users
• Ability to report users
• Method of appealing ban
• In-app test-based messaging
• Android and iOS applications
Nice to Have
• Complete sexual orientation options
• Relationship filters
• Social sign-up
• User veeritification option
• Multiple profile sections
• Additional required personal variables
• Icons/visual representation of variables
• Conduct pledge prior to sign-up
• Instagram, TikTok, and/or Spotify integration
• Browse/grid navigation option
• Ability to like component of profile
• Etc.
Formative Testing
We sketched 3 concepts for Trill in order to brainstorm different ideas. Thinking about our problem statement, we focused on specific interactions to test.
- Concept A (Filtering and Chatting)
For the first concept, I incorporated “must have” and “nice to have” features of the app by adding filtering and chatting options. Users can filter based on gender, age range, location, and interest, so that suggested results are customizable to users.
- They can change the view of the home screen from small grid to larger grids views.
- Users can block and report others.
- Concept B (Easy Event Set Up)
One of my teammates worked on concept B. Potential users are concerned about the safety of attending an event and the ability to report or rate a user so Trill helps ease those concerns to make plan setting easy and worry-free. Users can see ratings of the hosts and specific locations will be shown differently depending on the privacy settings.
- Concept C (Homepage and chatting)
Two other teammates work on the “Instagram Style Feed” homepage. It is based on Instagram and it is part of the client’s requirements. The user double taps to “like” their match while personality traits and insights are included within the profile cards on the homepage to enable interesting connections.
- The profile was modeled after Instagram at the client’s request.
- Users can edit from any screen in order to maintain good UX Heuristics.
- Users said personalization was important, so we included the ability to add a background picture in addition to the standard profile picture.
- Key information (like name, city and age) are displayed below the photos.
- The tab pattern is used to allow users to quickly jump from Events, Likes, and Info.
- Featuring events as on par with likes or profile info stress the key selling point of Trill Users wanted to link external accounts like Spotify so we designed a profile that includes this integration.
Key insights on concept sketches
Grid View
Users like that it was scannable, but does it force users to judge on appearance alone?
Privacy & Security
• Include info about the hosts
• Invite matches only
• Allow for private events
• Don’t share a user’s planned events
Filtering by interest
Users like the ability to search and filter people based on their interests
Information Architecture
After getting insights on the concepts we tested, we narrowed down our options and came up with the structure of the app. We decided to make the bottom navigation the primary navigation. Knowing we were limited to five items in the bottom navigation, it helped us focus on what was most important to indicate to users of the app.
Rule Of Five!!!
Our client wanted to include the Rule of Five as an additional feature of the app. This feature allows users to:
-
Have 5 matches at one time
-
5 days to chat—Trill talk to ensure quality conversations
-
Have 5 days to schedule a 5 minute video chat “Trill Talk”
- 5 days to schedule a “Trill”—meet up
If users want to talk to more than 5 matches at one time, they have to pay an additional fee. Thereby, the team was struggling about how to design this feature into the app in the most convenient way, so that users can enjoy using the app without feeling “nickel and dimed.”
Wireframes
- Wireframe A
I and my partner—Kim work on the event’s flow which allows the user to schedule a group or couple event. For a group’s event, users can set up the number of attendees, modify the privacy of those events and accept or deny requests from attendees. For a couple’s event, users can set up a private event with their match through chat’s screen.
- Wireframe B
The second wireframes are the views of the homepage which users can show their basic information. In addition, we hide the “skip” and “like” buttons on purpose, so that users cannot skip a profile so quickly until they read the entire profile and decide to do so.
Prototype
Usability Testing
We conducted a usability testing on 2 directions to get feedback of our interpretation of the concept of the app.
- Concept A:
Tested the flow of an user exploring the app, connecting with other users, and setting a plan with their match.
- Concept B:
Tested the Rule-of-Five feature alone to gather feedback about this new concept
Usability Testing Results
60%
wanted more explanations about Rule-of-Five
80%
liked scrolling through matches
40%
said more efficient when creating events through messaging
What's Next?
If we had more time to work on this project, here are the steps that we would have taken for next iterations.
- Add additional flows to wireframe and prototypes to conduct another usability test on potential users.
- Look at the other competitors on how they built their event creation within their apps.
-
Develop pricing strategy on additional features.
Lessons Learned
I learned that communication and collaboration are keys to working effectively in a team. In addition, having good communication with the client is a way to keep the team on the same page with the client so he can inform us of the changes that he decides to go with.
With the help of JIRA— a project management platform, I was able to prioritize and keep track with the team work. I accomplished project management in a convenient way.
If I could go back to change some things on our project, I would create a slack channel with the client at the beginning of the project, so that as a product manager, I can regularly check in with him and inform him about the changes that we were making as well as any changes that he has in mind. Therefore, we won’t have to change things at the last minute.
Also, I would contact Figma’s customer service about the problem that we had on the typography sooner, so we wouldn’t spend a lot of time on fixing bugs by ourselves.
