At-a-Glance
Sappho is a mobile application designed to support the dating experiences of queer women. Its primary focus is to foster a welcoming and secure dating environment for women attracted to other women. Sappho aims to build a sense of community among queer women by offering features such as tailored personality matching, customizable dating preferences, and distance-based filters. Additionally, Sappho provides a valuable support system for those seeking guidance and advice in the realm of queer dating. For the sake of this project we focused on creating the onboarding and swiping functions.
Created by:
Amanda Miller
Timeline
3 Months
My Role
UX Designer
Researcher
Logo Designer
Problem
There are a large number of dating apps available on the market. While most make space for queer women, there is currently no company that is specifically dedicated to offering queer women potential romantic matches that offers a high-functioning application. Based on our research 80% of Lesbians have more than one dating app downloaded at a time. This reflects the need for a specifically curated Queer lesbian dating app. While Gay men have Grindr, Lesbians don't have a standardized app for their community. Grindr is an app that was designed to take into account the different ways in which gay men date compared to heterosexual folks. As of now, there is an app called HER, that was created and advertised for queer women, but most American users opt out of using it and instead choose other platforms such as Tinder, Bumble and/or Hinge. While these three platforms all make space for LGBTQ+ users, queer women report feeling like they’re not being made a focus.
Solution
Sappho will provide a space for women, designed by women – while optimizing the unique and nuanced way queer women interact with each other to build community and spark romantic connections. Sappho will help promote more connections by having users engage in community posts. These responses will be reflected onto user's profiles , providing users with matches better suited for them.
What Makes Sappho Special?
Sappho mandates that matches must promptly exchange messages upon receiving the match notification in the app; otherwise, the match will be forfeited. This feature proves advantageous as a common grievance among lesbians about dating apps is the lack of communication. Implementing this approach incentivizes users to engage in conversations, as it becomes the sole means to retain a match. In contrast to Bumble, which necessitates mutual messaging within 24 hours, Sappho requires users to initiate contact immediately upon receiving the match notification while swiping. This approach ensures users are promptly informed of a match, fostering a more immediate connection. Beyond facilitating individual connections, Sappho is dedicated to cultivating a queer community, especially in regions lacking physical LGBTQ+ spaces. Through users' responses to Community Posts, individuals gain valuable insights into others' personalities, enhancing their understanding of potential matches.
Process
User Research
Persona
For this process, our first task is to understand our potential users. We can only design a good product with the users’ needs in mind. We conducted user interviews focusing on the queer women's dating app, Her, to assess Sappho's competitiveness against major queer dating platforms. Our research aimed to identify pain points in Her, providing insights for innovation in the Sappho user interface. Our user group comprised of single individuals identifying as women interested in dating other women, and we interviewed six participants. To ensure a comprehensive understanding, we crafted a neutral interview script designed to elicit stories and validate/invalidate our assumptions naturally.
We were able to speak with women who ranged in sexuality, current relationship status, and what they were looking for from being on a dating app. From these conversations, we were able to extract a litany of information regarding their goals from being on a dating app. We consistently heard a number of frustrations with existing dating apps. One of the most common complaints was the over reliance on photos and the lack of in-depth information regarding the people on the other side of the screen. Participants felt like the interactions were “shallow” and lacked depth. Multiple of our participants stated that they value intentionality and ability to have deep conversations from a potential partner for a romantic relationship. They went on to say that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to filter out people on dating apps for this trait without investing substantial time into a potential partner. One participant went on to mention that another frustration they face is the common occurence where no one starts a conversation after matching.
Click here to see the full interview process from beginning to end.
Click here to see the full research and modeling process.
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User Flow Model
Next, we developed a user flow model. The user flow model displays the interconnections between the different components of our system and shows how information flows through the app interface as it's used. All relevant interactions for our system are presented. We also developed a user model, to help us demonstrate the various work roles, subroles, and machine roles associated with our project.
User Models
Work Roles
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Swipers: Main work role and user classes. Inputting profile and preference information, swiping to sort through profiles.
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Casual-Monogamous Relationships (CMR): Swipers who are seeking a casual relationship with one person and they have a broad range of phone skills and backgrounds. They are people who may or may not have used other dating apps.
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First Time Users (FTU): For swipers who have not used other dating apps or Sappho, they will be given instructional material on how to use Sappho as well as practice swipes and community interactions.
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Previous Users (PU): For swipers who have used other dating apps or Sappho, they will not be given any additional tasks, but will be given the chance to view a tutorial if they wish.
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Casual-Polyamorous Relationships (CPR): Swipers who are seeking casual relationships with multiple people and they have a broad range of phone skills and backgrounds. They are people who may or may not have used other dating apps.
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First Time Users (FTU): For users who have not used other dating apps, they will be given instructional material on how to use Sappho as well as practice swipes and community interactions.
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Previous Users (PU): For swipers who have used other dating apps or Sappho, they will not be given any additional tasks, but will be given the chance to view a tutorial if they wish.
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Serious-Monogamous Relationships (SMR): Swipers who are seeking serious relationships with one person and they have a broad range of phone skills and backgrounds. They are people who may or may not have used other dating apps.
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First Time Users (FTU): For users who have not used other dating apps, they will be given instructional material on how to use Sappho as well as practice swipes and community interactions.
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Previous Users (PU): For swipers who have used other dating apps or Sappho, they will not be given any additional tasks, but will be given the chance to view a tutorial if they wish.
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Serious-Polyamorous Relationships (SPR): Swipers who are seeking serious relationships with multiple people and they have a broad range of phone skills and backgrounds. They are people who may or may not have used other dating apps.
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First Time Users (FTU): For users who have not used other dating apps, they will be given instructional material on how to use Sappho as well as practice swipes and community interactions.
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Previous Users (PU): For swipers who have used other dating apps or Sappho, they will not be given any additional tasks, but will be given the chance to view a tutorial if they wish.
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Community Users: Work Roles and Classes
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Company Content Responders: Users respond to community discussion content that has been uploaded by the company.
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Community Responders: Users who are responding to comments of others users on community forums uploaded by the company.
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Company
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Content Creator: Creating educational or discussion content within the community section to spark conversations among users.
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Moderators: Ensure that users are acting in accordance with the Terms and Conditions.
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Machine Roles
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User’s Phone:
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Camera and Camera Roll: User image creation and image uploading for profile creation.
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Social Media: Importing social media information for profile creation (eg. Top Spotify lists included in the app).
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GPS: Current location for dating system to filter through location.
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Dating System:
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Preference Sorting: Receiving preference and profile information then relaying similarities to users.
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Matching System: Receiving preference and profile information then outputting profile to users to swipe on.
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Community System: Uploading community topics from moderators to user interface and integrating user discussion onto swiper profile.
Storyboard
Paper First!
Initial sketches of the profile creation, profile overview and swiping sections of the Sappho app.
Click here to see the design process in-depth.
Lo-fi Prototype
Login
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Sign-up
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Onboarding
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Swiping
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Medium Fidelity Prototype
Implemented a color palette, uniform design, and visual hierarchy for the targeted pages. The application adopts a pastel lavender color scheme, inspired by the historical significance of lavender as a discreet symbol of sapphic interest, often exchanged between women as a covert expression of affection.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Prototype
In this project, our attention was directed towards the crucial pages, community sections, and swipe/messaging interfaces. Recognizing the commonality in sign-up pages among many dating apps, we opted to focus on what distinguishes our app from the rest, given the tight turnaround deadline.
Click here to see the full prototyping process.
Settings
Community
page
Learnings
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Integrate User Research Early and Often:
The role of user research cannot be overstated. We routinely returned to our user research findings throughout the entire project in order to ground ourselves in the reality of what our ideal users wanted and needed. -
Focus on User-Centered Prototyping:We maintained our focus on our users and their experience. We believed that their feedback was crucial and we used some of their insight from our pilot test to go back and revise our prototype in order to be more closely aligned with our “why.”
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Clear Communication Across Team:
We are very proud of the manner in which our team cooperated and completed this project. Part of what led to our success was a clear communication of expectation and deadlines.