Introduction

In today's interconnected world, meeting people to form meaningful relationships remains challenging. The online dating market is growing yearly as more people use dating apps to connect with people outside of traditional methods.

Dating app user bases continue to grow as the market expands and new regions and demographics emerge worldwide.

Despite the increase in the number of users of dating apps and steadily evolving apps, there is room for improvement in the number of users achieving their connection goals.

Problem

Dating is a universal challenge; meeting people is driven by a complex soup of factors that vary from user to user. Dating apps try to match people by allowing users to search through profiles and facilitating connections. 

What should be a smooth introduction and easy communication is often difficult, leaving people disappointed. Users should not waste time with bad matches, worry about being scammed, or have anxiety about establishing communication with someone who is a good fit.

The effectiveness of online dating in facilitating meaningful connections of all kinds boils down to a lack of understanding of the different types of users and the factors that influence their behaviors.

The goal is to unravel the different user types, their motivations, and the challenges they face when navigating the world of online connections. Armed with this knowledge, I'll present my findings to my team to shape an app we are designing.

The Goal of my research was to unravel the different user types and gain insights in their attitudes and broad variety of factors that influence the interaction between users in online dating platforms. I used a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, conducting a survey and user interviews from a target audience group.

User survey

Using Google Forms, I created and conducted a survey asking about demographics, online dating behavior, motivations, challenges, preferences, and expectations. 

The survey was circulated among my friends and professional network using Facebook and WhatsApp. The target audience was people currently using dating apps or people with experience using dating apps in the past 5 years. I had 32 people respond.

Survey response data

User interviews

I conducted three user interviews with two women and one man, each from the three different age groups that had the most responses in my survey.

I arranged interviews on Zoom with each participant, asking 10 questions each with a follow-up question to understand their perspectives. By studying the transcripts of the three interviews, I was able to define the pain points to better understand users' common pain points.

Findings

Several themes kept coming up that multiple users had experienced.

Recovering from broken trust can be challenging and may require time and effort.

Discovering significant incompatibilities, such as different motives, may result in heartache, the need to reevaluate the relationship, and lost time.

Dealing with disappointments, ghosting, or encountering dishonest profiles can be emotionally taxing.

Experiencing rejection can have a lasting impact on self-esteem and confidence.

The process of creating a profile can be challenging, with feedback leading

to waste effort and fatigue with what is one of the most important things to do in the dating process.

User personas

I created two user personas to represent the needs and pain points of user types based on my survey and user interview research.

User 1 seeks to meet people relocating to a new city but, within that aspiration, wants to meet someone with whom to form a serious relationship.

User 2 is looking to connect with people casually. He previously used a dating app and is looking to start the process again, but with a new one, hoping to get better results. 

Empathy maps

Conclusion

Working on the project is fascinating. It's prominent dating apps need improvement. Security and profile authenticity is an essential feature for users. Another feature users look for is better algorithms to make better matches or suggestions. From the pain points mentioned in the presentation, having a matchmaker subscription on the app will help users and alleviate most of their concerns.