PROJECT OVERVIEW


Spark is a social dating app that connects users through shared interests and mutual friends, and facilitates organic connections through live in-person events. Spark works in partnership with eventbrite, a global self-service ticketing platform for live experiences.


RESEARCH METHODS:  User interviews, Affinity Mapping, Secondary Market Research, Persona Development, User Journey, Problem Statement, Feature Prioritization, Ideation Sketching & Design Studio, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Iterating

MY CONTRIBUTIONS 

TEAM:  Jenny Chen, Dario Pasquale, Penny Qian, Lin Yang
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PROJECT TIMELINE:  3 week sprint
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MY ROLE:  UX Designer | Project Manager
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‍Collaborated with team through research, ideation, design, usability testing, iteration, prototyping and final project presentation. As project manager I was also responsible for overseeing project timeline, managing conflict, and ensuring the successful completion of project and deliverables at the end of 3-week sprint
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TOOLS:  Figma, Miro, Zepelin

Sounds counterintuitive, but what if there was a dating app that facilitated organic connections? My team and I challenged ourselves to design a solution to connect single people who share mutual interests  and help them meet serendipitously through in-person events hosted by mutual friends .
...How might we help single people with similar interests meet through in-person events and facilitate meaningful connections through shared experiences?

THE CHALLENGE

In today's hyperconnected world, swiping for love has become a cultural phenomenon. With over 300 million people worldwide on dating apps, it seems that finding that someone special is easier than ever. Yet many people are jaded by online dating and are finding it harder to build meaningful connections and meet people organically.

We hypothesized that people want to form connections and share experiences through meeting in real life and attending in-person events.

Our Assumptions: 
Dates with nothing in common = 😔
Personal interests + social dating lives = 😍
Meet someone organically = 🤩 but hard!!!
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THE GOAL

THE SOLUTION:
spark
by eventbrite
View  Prototype

a dating app that facilitates organic, in-person connections through interest-based events initiated by mutual friends and friends-of-friends.

Value Proposition
Our Impact
HOW DID WE ARRIVE AT OUR FINAL DESIGN?
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OUR PROCESS
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RESEARCH
EMPATHIZE
DESIGN
TEST & ITERATE
DELIVER
RESEARCH
MARKET RESEARCH
Competitive feature analysis helps us to understand competitor products such as Tinder and Hinge, and provides insight into gaps in the current market where there are opportunities to provide new features and solutions.

Current online dating platforms have various features and algorithms to connect potential matches. However, we found that none have features that facilitate the process of meeting in person. Out of the five online dating services we researched, only Thursday connected users through in-person events, while offering limited in-app features for targeted matching through recommended profiles, swiping, and connecting users through social media. 
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UNDERSTANDING OUR TARGET USERS
We conducted user interviews to gain a better understanding of users' frustrations with the current online dating space.
We discovered some common themes among our interviewees regarding their experience and preferences with dating apps which seemed to validate some of our initial assumptions about users. When asked about meeting new people, many expressed that they prefer to meet people through friends of friends, as it establishes a sense of commonality and trust. This was a key insight that inspired us to brainstorm features that involve connecting users through mutual friends and contacts.
WHAT WE LEARNED: (KEY QUOTES)
LET'S MEET OUR PERSONA, LUKE
The insights gathered from the user interviews helped us understand the needs and motivations of our target users. We used this information to create a persona, Luke. Luke will serve as a representative of our target users, and help us keep their goals, needs, frustrations, and motivations in mind as we design our product.

Luke's primary goal is to meet new people outside of his circle of friends from school, and is frustrated with how difficult it is to meet and form meaningful connections with like minded people.  
We created the following journey map to help us visualize a typical experience on a dating app, and help us identify user pain-points and discover potential areas of opportunity for our product to provide support for users.
REVISITING THE CHALLENGE
How might we help single people meet others who share mutual friends and similar interests and facilitate meaningful connections through shared experiences at in-person events?
IDEATION
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With clear focus on our user and their needs, we ideated potential features that would be the most valuable for Luke.
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Using a "Must/Should/Could/Won't" framework and feature prioritization matrix, we determined the following features to be essential to include in our MVP:

Notifications, Send invitations, Share events, Cap on invitees, Browsing events, Filters based on activities/location/friends, Event detail window, Create open/closed, private and invite-only events, Messaging, Sync contacts
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DESIGN STUDIO


We participated in a round of ideation sketches, pitching and critiquing.

We sketched layouts for each screen and discussed ideas that we came up with. We then brought our concepts together and laid out the framework for our MVP.
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INITIAL DESIGNS

Our mid-fidelity wireframes were created by combining and building on ideas from our design studio sketches.

The following mid-fidelity screens illustrate the basic layouts and key features within our design.
DESIGN
BRANDING & UI GUIDEILNES
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DESIGN DECISIONS
DELIVER
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FINAL PROTOTYPE: 
FEATURES IN ACTION
Create an event and invite from first/second-degree network
View your event invites...
Swipe right?
Discover popular public events in your network and browse through a curated feed based on your interests
Connect with profiles in
guest list after an event!
REFLECTION
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This project was my first time leading a design sprint, and if I'm honest it was really difficult! Throughout the project, I learned many lessons, including the importance of effective delegation, communication, and prioritization in order to meet deadlines. Ensuring that everyone's voices were heard and navigating disagreements while trying to integrate diverse ideas under the tight time constraints of a 3-week sprint was a steep learning curve. However, these challenges ultimately led to the creation of a vibrant and multi-faceted product that we were all proud of.

As with any design sprint, our product is still far from perfect. If given more time, we would love to continue building on the features within our product. Future improvements include:
  • Built-in Eventbrite ticketing
  • Manual editing/filtering for private event invites
  • Clearer CTA and path to viewing guest list profiles after an event