DubaiHabibi
Overview
Our client is a busy executive who wants to create an innovative date app to compete in the market. My group and I were focused on the human-centered design and we used the double-diamond approach since the investigation of the users needs, planning processes and methods to a high-fidelity prototype. DubaiHabibi a location based, mobile dating and social network app that uses geolocation to enable real-time, natural connections. The idea of the project includes: Set up your status and check-in the location bar, club, restaurant, event, beach, gym and instantly view information about the users around you. You will be able to view profiles based on your preferred filters.
Technologies Used
SWIFT
NODEJS
JAVA
DESIGN
LARAVEL
Business Requirements
The main areas of investigation included finding out how people feel about online dating, their frustrations and potential improvements on those ones apps in the market already. The dating app market is saturated, so what would make users switch from their current app to a new one? What feature would engage a new set of users? What would make current users change the app that they use to a new one? Our client wanted the app to become most popular dating app in the Dubai in 6 months after the launch, allow users to do fast and efficient connections, make it safe for users, monetise the product and grow the user database in phase 2.
Key Challenges
The market — There are many apps that allow users to connect with other people. Some of them are focus on “gamification” and prioritise quantity over quality such as Tinder. Other apps and websites are focused on finding the “perfect match” and attracting people inclined to have a serious relationship eg. E-Harmony. There are also apps that connect people for networking (Shapr)or specific apps for casual relationship such as Happn, that shows you where you and other users have crossed paths.
- Narrowing down — The domain research focused on the apps with similar features as Piin and also the most popular ones in the research.
- DubaiHabibi is the only app that coordinates the 3 main features including advanced filters, girls messaging first and check in an specific location.
- Most apps allow users to see the distance between their connections but Piin allows users to see exactly where their connections are, whether it’s a coffee shop, a museum or a gym.
Solutions and Outcomes
According to the business objective and the user needs the team managed to find specific solutions focusing on the benefit of both client and users and enhancing the design possibilities. The main solutions are pointed below:
Security
Women need to feel safe on real-time geolocation apps and have protection against harassment.Therefore we decided to create features such as Report abuse, block users, report spam or offensive photo
Encouragement
Real-time connections are intimidating. We developed “gifts” and messages as “ice-breakers” and encouraged users to talk about themselves asking specific questions inside their profile setup. E.g.: “My guilty pleasure is…”, “My next holiday will be…
Geolocation Radius
One of the business goals is to differentiate from apps that match with people commuting like Happn. Users have to be in a specific place to be able to use the app. Therefore, users are likely to find few matches or none during the first months after the app launch so, we increase the radius to 500m or more. E.g.: A user is in a coffee shop and matches with someone who is in a pub 500m away.
Matches
Users want to have better matches, they don’t like Tinder’s gamification. In order to improve this point, we created advanced filters.
Visual Design
Users wanted a clean, objective and easy-to-use app, therefore we created a minimalist design using a dark background that stands outs from other dating apps in the market.
