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. For the sake of this project we focused on creating the onboarding and swiping functions.
Client
Private
Timeline
6 Months
Team
3 Person
My Role
Lead UX Designer
Junior 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 successfully providing queer women with a virtual space for dating. 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 lesbian dating app. While gay men have Grindr, lesbians don't have a standardized app for their community. 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.
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 to get to know other users in a more intimate way. These responses will be reflected onto user's profiles , providing users with matches better suited for them. In addition, 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 initiative for either match to message each other
Process
User Research
For this process, our first task is to understand our potential users. We can only design a good product with the user's 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.
Persona
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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.
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
Settings
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Sign-up
Onboarding
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Swiping
Community Page
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Medium Fidelity Prototype
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
Click here to see the full prototyping process.
Lessons
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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.
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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.