OVERVIEW
YahLove is a mobile dating app for the Christian community, it encourages "clean" dating with rules that protect the integrity of church/religious members who seek safe, positive and God-centered relationships.
This was a freelance project that originated from an investor's idea, who wanted to aim this product at users who dislike current dating offers in the market where casual relationships are encouraged.
This was a freelance project that originated from an investor's idea, who wanted to aim this product at users who dislike current dating offers in the market where casual relationships are encouraged.
An important requirement for this project is to keep the design simple with easy controls, also this design gets different color palettes based on gender, blue for male users, pink for female users.
My Role
UX/UI Designer
User Experience Research, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping
Project Date: Apr 2022 - May 2022
Problem Statement
The Christian community is often found at a crossroads, their spiritual beliefs forbid them of many practices that are considered "unholy", those can be as simple as sexual innuendo which is common among dating apps and as seemingly innocent as sending an eggplant or peach emoji, however they also have basic human needs, such as romance and intimacy.
Their beliefs make it difficult for them to consider joining popular dating apps and attempt finding romance without "breaking the rules" furthermore they would prefer if this romance included scripture talk, this poses the question: How can Christians access the dating scene in a Christian only environment that they can consider clean and have conversations that would ultimately lead to marriage?
This is why YahLove has developed the concept "Dating with purpose" meaning that this app offers it's users the opportunity to find love with the condition to commit to respectful and meaningful dating practices that should ultimately lead to a final goal which is stablishing a stable and long-lasting romantic relationship.
Competitive Analysis
At the time of starting the project, there were similar dating offers, some of these were direct competitors targeting the key religious demographic group that the app aimed to appeal to, however all of the compared competitors encouraged quick or casual dating, whereas YahLove encourages dating with purpose.
After searching and testing similar apps I shortlisted the more prominent features and proceeded to create a competitive analysis and compared them against YahLove, all of these apps were popular dating offerings, during this comparison I discovered that ONE app was aimed at Christian groups, But YahLove set itself apart in two substantial ways:
- At the moment of doing this research there are no plans to charge subscription to YahLove users.
- YahLove offers moderated chat rooms to have clean discussions about scripture and encourage conversations that lead to dating with purpose.
- YahLove aims to enforce strict profanity filters to avoid disrespectful, abusive or sexual & seductive talk.
Personas & Empathy Study
The demographic group that YahLove is targeted at is unlike most products and services aimed at religious beliefs and not age, gender, or status, and after conducting interviews and surveys to the a pool of the intended demographics I gathered the data and reviewed the quantitative and qualitative results and defined three profiles of personas that would represent key potential user archetypes: Donna (Musician, 18), Ashley (Student, 26) and Kevin (Restaurant Manager, 34).
These personas helped visualize and empathize with the thoughts and intentions of the main user groups the app targets as well as prioritize goals according to their needs and make educated design decisions that would improve the overall user experience of the app.
Information Architecture
Based on the previously conducted research, I started to draw and polish variations of possible user journeys that our personas would take on our app in order to achieve their goals, I finally ended with an effective architecture for the app. Starting from sign up all the way to the dating chat and back to the home screen I repeated the process taking different decisions each time in order to get different results and clearing possible roadblocks in the user journey.
Wireframes
After having a clear idea of the most efficient navigation path I started to create sketches organizing and including all the elements of the app.
Visual Design
Since this app was a new product I was tasked with developing and establishing a brand identity and guidelines before creating visual iterations of mood boards to create an usable UI kit and produce a final MVP of the app.
These screen design were then used to conduce a poll that in return would indicate which versions users liked the most.
Prototype
Prototypes were created at two key stages of the process:
- A low fidelity prototype using the wireframes to test usability and fix user experience roadblocks
- A high fidelity prototype with the final UI that would later be developed into a final working product.
Conclusion
After this two week long creation project, there was so much I learned about YahLove and the potential it has to positively affect the Christian community's dating scene, however there were aspects of the process I would've liked to improve given there had been sufficient budget from the client's side and a more flexible deadline.
After sending the app design to the client for development, there are a few recommendations I made for next steps to take with the objective to improve the app's design & usability.
- Continue to user test the new design and communicate user feedback for future improvements.
- Allow users to register using existing social media platforms in order to quick import their profiles.
- Consider including location features to facilitate the face to face encounter of users who agree to a date.
- Perform heuristics analysis to facilitate the app usability for users with disabilities.
July 2022 Update
The App investor has contacted me to complete the app's design, including a comprehensive sign up system that survey's the user's interests, as well as add new features and upgrade the app's reach and functionality.
