Nia J.
Project Overview
My team was selected to identify a problem and create a solution that would align with the objectives of our strategic partner, Instagram.
Scope of Work
This project sought to create a native app, Q, that would support the LGBTQ+ community, by establishing meaningful relationships through curated content.
Competitive
Analysis
User
Research
Iterative
Design
Product
Testing
Problem Statement
How might we provide the LGBTQ+ community with an app that creates an inclusive space for dating?
Research
Competitive Analysis
We wanted to understand our partner's market value and how it brings utility to its customers.
Methodology: Business Model Canvas
Our team conducted market research for two days to have an accurate perspective of our strategic partner, Instagram.
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Instagram has a value-driven, self-service cost structure.
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It is considered the most popular app for B2C and B2B commercial transactions.
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Largest revenue stream: advertisement fees from business accounts.
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75% of 18–24-year-olds are active users.
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60% of users discover new products on the platform (Early Adopters).
*Parent company is Facebook*
Methodology: Feature Analysis
Our team analyzed competitors and comparators through ten features that we identified as common to dating apps. The competitors we identified are in the same market as our partner, while the comparators offer similar functions/features in different markets or industries.
Competitors
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The majority of the platforms are free for users.
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Key features: phone/video chat, freemium services, clear/direct harassment policy, messaging, user-managed privacy settings.
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Platforms initiate chat feature between users through a swipe interaction on specific screens within the app.
Comparators
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Platforms are free for users with the option to upgrade to premium services.
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Key features: scroll (instead of swipe), geo-targeted content (but not mandatory, messaging, user-managed privacy settings.
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The majority of platforms have a clear harassment policy.
Methodology: Competitive Matrix
Our team completed a competitive matrix to identify competitors’ position through the parameters of LBGTQ+ inclusion and gender identity labels. We analyzed competitors’ signup process to determine their placement within the matrix.
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Gender identity labels were based on a user’s ability to select non-binary or binary identifiers.
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Every quadrant has a competitor; quadrant II is the most saturated.
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We planned to enter a niche market (LGBTQ+ inclusive & Non-binary identifiers) within the dating app space.
Methodology: Technical Background
Our team researched and synthesized findings to understand the most popular platforms for online dating and the reason for their popularity.
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A significant number of users for online dating apps, United States demographic expected to reach 25.7 million by 2023.
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“Native mobile apps provide the best user experience with the most functionality available.”
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“Roughly half or more of 18-to 29-year olds (48%) and LGB adults (55%) say they have ever used a dating site or app.”
Overall Findings: Competitive Analysis
While native apps require research and innovation for each mobile platform, our team decided to focus on the most used mobile device used for online dating, the smartphone. Features that we identified as common to dating apps include chat and video features, privacy settings, and a clear/direct harassment policy. Our team analyzed these features through the previously mentioned feature analysis. These findings allowed our team to craft appropriate questions necessary for our screener survey to progress to user research.
User Research
We set out to validate our hypothesis through user interviews to understand how participants feel about existing dating apps and their experiences as members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Methodology: Screener Survey
Findings
For two days, our team created and distributed a screener survey to members of the LGBTQ+ community. We formed the questions from insights gained through competitive analysis. We sought to contact people considered apart of our target audience- LGTBQ+ users of dating apps between 18 and 29 years of age.
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Forty-three submissions: >75% were 18–24 years old, <30% were 25–34 years old.
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The majority of participants were within the largest demographic of our partner’s user groups.
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97% of participants identified as being apart of the LGBTQ+ community.
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74% of participants had feminine gender identity labels.
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93% of participants had experience using dating apps.
Methodology: User Interviews
Findings
For two days, our team moderated user interviews over Zoom.
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Five people: various ages, locations, and professions.
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Interview script used for all interviews.
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We recorded all interviews with user permission to collect insights.
Our team experienced a pivotal moment in the project; we learned that some users were using our partner’s app as a dating app since there are not mandatory, binary, gender identity labels during the signup process. Furthermore, on our partner’s app, users could curate their experience, which led them to find others within the LGBTQ+ community, allowing the formation of friendships through a digital platform.
This discovery completely shifted the design plan of our app. Instead of creating an LGBTQ+ dating app, we decided to create an app more focused on cultivating meaningful relationships through curated content.
Overall Findings: User Research
Members of the LGBTQ+ community date and form friendships within their community, through a popular social media app that does not have mandatory, binary, gender identity labels during the account signup process.
Synthesis
The responses from user interviews led to the synthesis of data that started with creating an affinity map, a tool used to identify user feedback trends/patterns.
Methodology: Affinity Map
Through Miro, interviewees'/users' responses were placed on color-coded post-it notes then organized based on themes.
Findings
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Users don’t believe long term relationships can be an outcome of using dating apps.
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Users like having the ability to curate their app experience.
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Dating apps give LGBTQ+ members access to other community members who would not have otherwise formed relationships.
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Users want the ability to form friendships and comment with other members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Trends included dating app usage, curated content, community access, apps are heteronormative, and connections.
The trends and insights from affinity mapping led to the formation of a persona, meet Sam.
Methodology: Persona
To get a clear understanding of our ideal user's goals, needs, and pain points, we compiled all our data and personified it through the formation of Sam.
Sam is originally from Canton, OH, and came to Austin to pursue a Master’s degree in Social Work. Being new to town, they want to develop a friend network within the queer community and find casual dating partners. Sam’s passion for photography is what led them to create their Instagram account almost nine years ago. When they began exploring their gender and sexual identity a few years later, they started a Twitter account to further engage with the online LGBTQ+ community. They would like to continue using online apps to connect with their local LGBTQ+ network but would like to avoid using apps like Tinder, where they feel the LGBTQ+ community is underrepresented.
Goals:
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Form genuine connections and friendships.
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Gain greater access to the LGBTQ+ community.
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Be able to display their personality on a dating app in a creative way.
Needs:
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The ability to use more specific identifiers.
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The ability to more closely curate the range of people they interact with on the app.
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A way to form friendships over romantic relationships.
Pain Points:
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Having to pay for dating apps.
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Not having enough app features to express personality.
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Unable to form friendships with local residents.
Finding
Our ideal user's aspirations, necessities, concerns, and emotional state require an app that has curated content and features that intentionally support its users' desires to form meaningful relationships within the LGBTQ+community.
User Journey
Methodology
In order to create more empathy for our ideal user, we created a journey map that allowed our team to understand Sam’s emotions and behavior while on a dating app to view potential matches. This user journey allowed us to effectively identify how we can provide a solution to the problem(s) they are trying to manage.
The task: Open the Tinder application and swipe through potential matches.
Finding
Overall Finding: Synthesis
Occurrences that are not conducive to creating meaningful relationships include Sam's inability to find great potential matches and not having an app where they can experience the intentional formation of friendships.
The formation of a persona and the creation of a user journey allowed our team to reexamine our problem statement and revise it based on the insight from data synthesis.
Revised Problem Statement
From our research, we learned that most users are not happy with their matches, face anxiety about whether to send a message to their matches, aren’t satisfied with the messages they receive, and find no one of interest, therefore being unhappy with the amount of time spent on dating apps. From these findings, we determined that users could benefit from LGTBQ+ optimization that is currently not present in dating apps.
How might we provide the LGBTQ+ community an inclusive space central to their experience, empowering them to cultivate meaningful connections?
After our team revised the problem statement, we progressed to the design phase of the Agile process.
Iterative Design
Actionable Insights
The insight gained from user research led to actionable insights that influenced the identification of three key features and a unique signup process. These insights led to the creation of the previously mentioned persona and user journey.
Dating Apps give LGBTQ+ members access to other members of the community who would not have otherwise formed relationships.»Feature where people can view LGBTQ+ events and culture in the city of their residence.
People like having the ability to curate their app experience.»A feature that enables users to take quizzes, share music tastes, and even their star chart.
Current dating apps are targeted at Heteronormative relationships.»A signup page where classification questions are inclusive and mindful of sexual and gender identity.
Users want the ability to form friendships and connect with other members of the LBGTQ+ community.»A function that gives the users a choice to select whether they’re interested in a friendship, romantic relationship, both, or neither.
Methodology: Design Studio
Our team and client stakeholders created low fidelity wireframes to ideate potential design solutions for the problem space while keeping the competitive analysis and user research in mind. This fidelity consisted of paper wireframes created through two rounds of a design studio. Each team member sketched for five minutes, followed by an explanation and critique by the team.
Findings
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Identity labels.
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Slider bars features.
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Matching as a friend setting option.
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Queer events and culture notification.
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Music share feature.
Insight: Design a native app to give users a sense of community that supports the cultivation of meaningful LGBTQ+ relationships.
Methodology: Mid-fi Wireframes
The results of round 1 of product testing led to the creation of mid-fidelity wireframes, which progressed to a mid-fi prototype. This fidelity differentiated from the lo-fi wireframe by being a purely digital iteration influenced by user interviews. Additionally, this was our first digital design attempt to showcase the influence of our partner’s product principles within our native app. Specifically, our partner’s purpose (“bringing you closer to the people and things you love”) and cost structure (free & value-driven). In addition to its platform choice (mobile app) to target and retain its ideal users, the same age demographic as our native app.
Findings
This fidelity was our team’s first digital design to showcase the influence of user research.
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Lean into the concept of highly personalized self-identification.
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Self-identification such as preferred pronouns, gender identity, and gender expression.
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Self-identification through pre-populated labels, user-created labels, or the option to skip this portion of account signup.
Methodology: Hi-fi Wireframes
Findings
We reiterated wireframes for high fidelity based on the results of round 1 of product testing. This fidelity contained key essential features identified through user research, user flow, and the prior round of product testing.
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Include API from Instagram, Spotify, and Co-star to support our app’s hyper-personalization features through curated content.
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Modify existing icons and add new icons to increase user intuitiveness through the user flow.
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Use of color and graphics to add delight to user experience.
User Flow
After creating digital wireframes, we generated user flows that detailed the user’s actions, the desired actions, and the screens' annotations.
Methodology: Mid-fi
Finding
We added annotations to detail user actions observed during round 1 of product testing based on the tasks users needed to complete.
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Users flow is not intuitive to observed user behavior.
Insight: Redesign of the user flow is necessary to increase the intuitiveness of tasks during product testing.
Methodology: Hi-fi
Finding
We added annotations to detail user actions observed during rounds 1 and 2 of product testing based on the tasks users needed to complete.
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Users flow is more intuitive to user annotations.
Insight: Redesign of the user flow increased the intuitiveness of tasks during product testing.
Once we completed wireframes and user flows, we progressed to the product testing phase of our project.
Product Testing
Insights gained from user research, design sessions, and user flows allowed our team to assess our native app.
Methodology: Initial User Testing
Findings
Our team created four tasks to test based on user interview insight to assess our app's navigability and intuitiveness.
Task 1: Connect with Jack as a friend.
Task 2: View Jack's profile.
Task 3: Go to the Events page, find an event you'd like to attend, and "favorite" it.
Task 4: Go to the home page to look at another profile.
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All users were able to complete all tasks.
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Task 1 was achieved entirely through direct success.
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Task 2 was completed entirely through indirect success.
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Tasks 3 and 4 were completed through direct and indirect success.
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Icons need to be updated; users struggled to know what the icons represented.
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The “Q” icon needs to be replaced.
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There's a need to add a home button to the bottom navigation (as part of multiple pathways to return to the home screen).
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Users need to be able to view potential connection profiles in detail on the home screen.
Insight: Redesign is necessary to increase the direct success of tasks.
Methodology: Final Round
After design reiterations based on Round 1 of testing, our team assessed four tasks through a final product testing round. The tasks were the same as those used in the first round of testing.
Findings
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This round also did not experience any task failures.
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Tasks 1 and 2 were achieved through indirect success.
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Tasks 3 and 4 were completed entirely through direct success.
Insight: The majority of calculated changes (deltas) represent a positive change, implying that the wireframes’ reiteration improved our app’s intuitiveness for our ideal users.
Pitch to Partner
After the second round of usability tests were complete, we created a spec doc for our native app. Then we presented our app to our partner. Our partner thought that we excelled at identifying the problem space. However, they were still unclear about how collaboration with our team and product would be a strategic partnership. This lack of understanding taught our team the importance of putting more focus on clearly articulating how our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) that aligns with a partner’s product principles and operational objectives.
Final Recommendations
Next Steps: Google HEART Framework
To determine if our app is successful, we will measure our metrics through the Google Heart Framework. Out of the five categories, we are focusing on:
Engagement
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Average time spent on the app
Adoption
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): How often quizzes are being taken
Retention
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): How many new connections a user makes per day
Continued Product Testing
Overall Findings
For the next cycle of the agile process, we believe it will be necessary To refine the visual expression of our design, particularly the account signup process. This next phase is integral in strengthening the unique value proposition of our minimum viable product. This task was not analyzed in the first phase of product testing as it is not relevant to the daily user journey.
Through competitive analysis, user research, and product testing, our team successfully designed an app that provided a solution to our problem statement.