RESEARCH 01 (LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS)
RESEARCH 02 (INTERVIEW)
Finding the market gap.
As a team, we conducted a quick series of landscape analysis to understand how Bumble's competitors are tackling safety. Our main insight from conducting competitive analysis was that the market lacked a solution that provided users with a high level of reassurance of the truthiness of other profiles.
"Hey, have you met up with people on Bumble before? If so, how was that process?"
As a team, we conducted a series of short interviews with our friends who were college students. Our key goal was to understand how students currently navigate the process of browsing on Bumble, and where they feel there are challenges and opportunities. We took the time to understand the experiences of both frequent and first-time users.
Honing down what made meeting up in-person feel like too much of a leap of faith.
We identified two main obstacles that stood in the way of the user’s transition from chatting online to in person interactions. Based on these design questions, we prototyped and iterated on two key features.
PROBLEM DEFINITION
REFLECTIONS
THE PROBLEM
CONCEPT 01
CONCEPT 02
Empowering Confidence in Face-to-Face Connections.
Members of Bumble – like members of other dating apps – often have concerns about their safety, whether that’s fear of being catfished, scammed, or otherwise. These concerns often prohibit a transition from the app dinner table, squashing relationships that once had budding potential.
Reframing the question, we asked… “How might we allow users to feel more comfortable and confident in taking the leap of faith in meeting up with their match in person for the first time?”
Bumble's Competitors
Challenges
Design Questions
First-time users sometimes just need a little bit of help to get the ball rolling.
The intelligent bot alerts users to their matches' credibility rating, offers online safety tips, and helps guide the transition from online chats to offline meet-ups based on profile credibility.
The first convo can feel nerve-racking and awkward for a first-time user.
Currently, first-time users often don't feel completely confident to start a convo with someone new, let alone taking their interactions offline.
Learnings
Learn from existing solutions.
In order to solve for our target users, we analyzed other dating apps such as Hinge and Tinder throughout the process of designing. I took note of ways they try to maintain information reliability and improve safety and sought to understand which existing features worked, why they worked, and why some didn’t.
First-time users feel hesistant on how safely take their convos offline.
Bumble-beeware gives safety tips, checks the match's credibility, and helps users move from chatting online to meeting up at the right time.
Users often double-check the validity of information of other profiles on external platforms.
A qualitative ranked scale adds more nuance to the authenticity of a profile, producing a more informative and streamlined experience for users.
Bridging the Gap from Swipes to In-Person.
Users feel more confident and comfortable in coordinating offline meet-ups with a more reliable and accessible credibility system.
Designing with significant time constraints.
Through collaborating with my team, I was challenged to create designs that are intuitive, inclusive, and achievable given my team's skillset and limited time. Despite the time constraint, I knew and understood that it was crucial to first spend a good amount of time to understand and empathize with the target users before jumping into designing.
TIMELINE
April 2023, 6 hours
CONTRIBUTION
User Research, Product Thinking, Product Thinking, Market Research
PROJECT TYPE & TEAM
Designathon
Team: (2 designers) Gigi H, Sharon J
Bumble Designathon
In April 2023, I attended a Designathon at Berkeley hosted by Bumble, where my team was tasked to ideate and design new product features for Bumble in 6 hours. The prompt was “How might Bumble help college students feel safe enough to take their digital connections offline?”
I collaborated with two designers to design the concept and prototype the interface in Figma. We won and it was a fun and insightful learning experience!
If you're curious about the detailed design process, I'd love to chat on Linkedin!