People who partake in relationships that aren’t monogamous are too often not included in conventional dating platforms.
I have always been in traditionally monogamous relationships. Before the kickoff call for this project I took the opportunity to do quick, basic research about the company and their business goals. The idea of a non monogamous relationships was something I seldom thought about and I instantly associated the project with polygamy. After just a few minutes of quick google searches about the struggles couples who don’t conform to societal relationship structure standards faced, I was enthralled. I really like working on projects that promote inclusivity, so I knew this is a project I would be passionate about.
Total project time: 40 hours
Original scope: Redesign browse feature of dating website to attract more relationship seekers, and less hookup seekers.
Team: Bill in Australia - CEO, and Meachayla in Boston - UX/UI Designer
Constraints: Application for iOS & Android.
The founder of the company, William, contacted me via email along with another UX/UI designer. The creative team would consist of both Mychaela and I - working together to solve problems faced by a new startup company called Monogamish.
The initial email exchange beckoned scheduling video meetings between the three of us, who all live in different regions on the planet. I live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America, Mychaela resides on the East coast of the United States and William lives in Melbourne, Australia. We ended up settling on a time slot that was not desired by me, but I am always willing to be super flexible with other people's schedule.
The meeting times ended up being at 3AM my time, twice a week. During the very first call, after a quick survey I wrote, the problem that Monogamish faced was very clear. During the first call William made it very clear he wanted every gender, and every relationship structure to be included, represented, and considered. William expressed several times that other applications miss the mark completely. William, who identifies as non-monogamous, was wealth of insight for me and a goldmine as a UX designer not only because of his perspective, but also his passion for this project.
Creation of a product that solves a problem as complex as multi-personal adult relationships ushers cunning planning. The creative team needed to develop a project plan in order to scope the predicted finish date for the project. The founder and CEO of the company was planning to handoff prototypes to the development team as quickly as possible. I drafted a proposed project assessment that included a hefty time allotment to research. After sharing the project planning document, roles were developed within the creative team. My part of the project would be initially research centric, but would segway into a visual role as the project matured.
I was superbly and splendidly happy when Mychaela agreed to let me spearhead the research portion of this journey. Not only I am a huge nerd 🤓 , but I have a lot of resources that I can utilize around me to get some great insights. Working as the marketing manager at gay bar, I get to meet all sorts of gender identities and relationship types.
I began my secondary research focused on gender and sexuality.
I quickly realized that my perceptions of gender and sexuality were completely wrong. Thesis statements, literary articles and other publications occupied my time as I soaked in as much information as possible. I learned that there are over 58 genders. 58! All of these genders had a very suitable and distinguishable, undeniable credence. I drafted a research paper centered on gender identities.
Next, what is sexuality? I focused my efforts on understanding sexuality and sexual identity. What an amazingly complex subject that I had assumed was very simple before partaking in this project. What I learned is that sexuality can’t be defined, it’s evolving and encompassing exceeding comprehension. My goal in researching gender and sexuality was to gain a sense of empathy and understand for a demographic the founder of the company strived to include.
Dating apps are common and there are a lot. They are all a little bit different - some provide context for building a relationship and some are intended for sexual encounters. During our kickoff call, I made it a point to ask the CEO of the company who he looks towards with admiration, and what companies exist that operate in ways that he doesn’t care for. At the end of the day, my directive was to steer towards relationship development and not casual encounters.
I picked a few apps to analyze. I needed to see how relationship centric apps operate, but also how casual encounter apps operate to contrast. I reviewed:
Each app that I did competitive analysis on I did research on beforehand to make sure I was covering a broad field of applications with different goals. There are a few apps that exist that I studied that do include members of alternative relationship structures, but none were absolutely inclusive. I downloaded each app, onboarded, completed the profile requirements and began matching and eventually communicating with other individuals on the platform. I came to a few realizations pretty quick.
Check out my Tinder analysis below:
In order to locate the right people to study for my primary research, I created a screener survey to illuminate the demographics the app strives to include. My screener survey was focused initially on gender and sexuality, then transitioned into relationship goal questions.
I posted my screener on social media, and several people shared it providing me a large pool of subjects to choose from. I quickly scheduled five people to interview for my primary research studies.
I interviewed a range of individuals with different relationship goals, gender identities and who used dating apps for different reasons. I noted observations and paid close attention to the participants as they answered the questions, and was able to witness them interacting with the dating app of their choice while I observed. Here are a few insights that I made:
Here are some things I learned during my interviews. I don't take pictures or record during any interview because I want to interviewee to trust me and not be inhibited by being recorded. I also won't refer to them by their names what so ever.
The first interview I conducted made me emotional. As a researcher and developer I have really sharpened my ability to absorb situations to become the most empathetic. The first interview I conducted was with a beautiful trans-gender woman named "Molly". Molly and I work together at an LGBT+ centric bar and restaurant here in Spokane. I work around a lot of transgender people, and many more who aren't binary with their gender expressions and identities, but I didn't realize what a struggle finding inclusive spaces were.
I learned that she doesn't date. Hasn't yet, and she told me that it's okay because it's something she expected before making the decision to transcend her born gender.
What, wait... Not dating at all?
Have you tried dating apps?
People objectify her. People fetishize her and insult her. People reach out to demonize her and belittle her - all because her gender identity isn't socially acceptable. This is the exact sort of injustice that makes me want to transform tools and platforms to create safe places for good people like Molly. She expressed to me that she is only concerned about finding places that feel safe to her, and that an app that didn't sexualize chatting seemed beneficial to her. She wants to network, date, find love, be sexual (maybe).
The interview went really well, but I was very saddened and disheartened when we concluded the conversation.
Seth wasn't very willing to talk about sexuality at lot at first. Instead of interviewing Seth, and him giving me canned snappy responses about him being straight, isn't it obvious, and things like that - the process went better. I completely dropped my researcher role and just had a conversation with this man. I told him about my sexuality and how it has completely changed and evolved over the past decade.
Once we got off on the right foot I revisited my objectives and began to ask him real questions about his sexuality and his gender identity. Ends up, Seth isn't as galvanized in his gender norm as he or I expected. At one point this muscular, alpha male told me he has homosexual fantasies.
Fantasies, that's all.
What if you could explore that, and feel free to do so without judgement?
Well, I probably would.
He explained that he's always dreamed about being with more than one partner, but really hasn't ever explored. He hasn't ever put his toes in the polyamorous waters because he doesn't know how to approach couples asking if they'd like a third. Seth's cellphone, which he offered me to examine as he showed me a dating app, was riddled full of quick messages that led to casual encounters, but didn't ever establish into a relationship.
I asked if he wanted a relationship and he claimed that he did, but wasn't secure with conversation enough to reach out for anything more than a physical rendez-vous. Seth relied on his body and looks to get what he felt he needed, but is left empty handed when the day is over.
Paula was edgy, nice, straight forward and opinionated.
I thought she was going to be a fantastic interview and in ways she was, but I didn't take a lot away from out conversation. She seemed very proud of her sexuality and relationship status, which is great, but not as revealing as I would have hoped. Paula found love on Facebook in poly centric group pages.
Paula almost came off as elitist, and whenever I would try to relate to her to get more information she should shut me down and complain about people who weren't non-monogamous.
Like, you realize that most people who are poly have been in at least one monogamous relationship right?
Our interview ended a bit earlier than my previous ones. I was able to take away that she found love in a networking environment, interacting with other poly users - not hooking up.
After each interview I asked the participants to check their dating apps for new messages, and to browse for 120 seconds.
How revealing! I noticed quick swipes A LOT. I read Hi, Hey, Whats up? sent messages and a whole lot of pointless interaction. Onward to research synthesis!
I took all of my observations, and made an affinity map. Throughout my journey as a user experience designer, I always gain the most when I create an affinity map. When I gathered all of my observations up onto note cards, there were some undeniable categories that took shape.
When I am creating affinity maps I love using color to denote observation tone. I think it's obvious here that good experience were green, indifferent were yellow and red were bad.
I created personas using the data I collected up to this point. I developed a persona for the most marginalized and the most normalized as a method to create the most inclusive product possible. Here are my personas:
I spent a week on research, and typically I would create an empathy map, do some card sorting and more. I didn't feel like I needed any of that. I gained SO much empathy for these people, understood their issues and pain points with products, and felt super confident after the research I had done. My task now was to dive in midstream as visuals were being created.
My creative partner for this product established the visual hierarchy and built the foundation while using my research each day. When I entered the visual portion of this project, most of the heavy lifting had been done.
Our focus was on browsing, and introducing a more useable experience when finding new matches.
The CEO would turn our hi fi mock ups into his developers to complete later. In a lot of ways this was akin to a sprint exercise.
Featured above is where the visuals were when I started with my aesthetic. We liked the hierarchy of the buttons, and like the modular feel of the screen. It has dimension, and is intuitive.
Here is what I came up with:
Trying to encompass the modular feel and the bold icons, I tried to amplify gender identity and sexuality immediately. Here were our notes to improve the design:
And finally, here is the final product that the CEO will take to develop. An app that calls out sexuality and gender immediately so there aren't any surprises, and an interactive modular scrollable interface with a lot of context to give users somethin' to talk about.
☝️☝️ Go ALL the way up. ☝️☝️
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