Improving the users post-match date planning experience on Bumble-A Case Study 📋🖋
Ever tried planning a date after matching on a dating app and found yourself completely clueless about where to go? You’re not alone!
Now in a matter of time, this excitement of meeting someone turns into an indecision overload..😕
No doubt, introduction of the Dating apps have completely revolutionised the way people make connections but we see, despite this convenience and accessibility of these dating apps, the real challenge is planning out dates after matching.
A bit of Context~
This is an exploratory UX project that delves into the common issues encountered by Bumble Dating app users while planning their first dates through the App.
So, Without any further ADO let’s get started!
Understanding the Problem..
In the current scenario of online dating, users often face dilemmas about where to go, what to do and what to eat on their in-person dates, this indecision can sometimes cause friction in the date planning process and can dampen the excitement of a new match leading to suboptimal date experiences.
“The post-matching phase, where excitement meets indecision”
About Bumble
Bumble is a popular dating App, helps you in finding your date by swiping and match mechanism.
It distinguishes itself by empowering women to make first moves in heterosexual matches , It also offers a friend finding mode(bumble BFF) and professional networking (bumble bizz) which actually contributes to its popularity globally.
However, despite its popularity there remains substantial room for improvement , specially in the post-matching phase which I aim to address through this research.
Our Goal
Our business goal is to enhance the post-match engagement by addressing this issue of indecision & confusion in planning dates while streamlining the date planning experience for users.
Research Begins..🔍
In order to delve into intricacies of the dating experience on Bumble focusing particularly on post- matching phase, my research began with a certain set of questions which came considering different perspectives-
Problem existence and validation
- Does this problem even exists ?
- What evidences validates the existence of this problem?
User experience
- Why and for whom are we solving this problem?
- How is this problem affecting the overall user experience?
Business perspective
- Why does this problem matter to business?
- How solving this problem will create difference for the business when it gets solved?
To answer these questions I will be adopting a user-centric approach, where I intend to gather insights through quantitative user surveys along with some qualitative user interviews to uncover the root causes of the problem and identify the potential opportunities for innovation within the Bumble app.
But initial exploration begins with some desk research!
Initial Research and Findings
Initially I explored various forums and social media platforms like Reddit and Quora.
From these it can be concluded that the process of date planning is filled with challenges including-
-Decision making difficulties
-Social anxiety
-Role ambiguity
-Mismatched preferences
-Date scheduling difficulties
In these above few excerpts ,people can be seen actively discussing about their struggles after matching on dating apps highlighting common frustrations, which furthermore validates the existence of this problem of planning date.
Insights from Online resources
Some research indicates that a significant portion of dating app users face frequent burnouts including indecision and even anxiety while using the dating apps. Source
These issues further get highlighted when it comes to planning an actual date which includes — deciding on date spots, activities and other logistical aspects.
Understanding User Burnout in Dating Apps
The process that people have to go through while using dating apps is fraught with a lot of emotional and cognitive load.
According to a Forbes article on dating app usage, many users experience significant burnout and frustration due
-to the repetitive nature of swiping
-difficulty in finding meaningful connections
-and the pressure to maintain an appealing profile
These factors can further contribute to a broader sense of dissatisfaction and disengagement from dating apps.
Relevance to the Problem Statement: These findings from this research are directly linked to the challenges Bumble users might face while planning dates, as the emotional toll of constant swiping and difficulties in making real connections can already feel a lot , and the idea of planning dates afterwards can add more to their overwhelm. this highlights the need to reduce emotional and cognitive burdens on users.
Competitive Analysis
Before proceeding further to gain user insights, I conducted a competitive analysis in order to understand how Bumble’s close competitors like Hinge and Tinder handle the post-matching experience, focusing specially on finding if the other apps do offer any tools or features that help users plan their dates?
After doing a competitive analysis it is found that no app has any dedicated date planning feature as of now.
Tinder primarily focus on swiping and matching experience & Hinge emphasises on building meaningful connections with prompts and in-depth profiles , but no app really serves the confusion of finding a perfect date spot or easing the process of date planning
Therefore, it can be concluded there’s no structured feature to facilitate the entire planning process.
Insights gained from Users Survey
To gain the user perspective I conducted a survey aimed at understanding the key challenges users face while planning in-person date through dating apps.Survey Link
For this purpose I first designed a survey guide to explore various aspects of the user experience, from demographic insights to specific behaviours and preferences related to date planning.
Survey Guide:
Detailed Survey insights:
- 44% of users feel that planning dates is too much effort, and about 16% find it frustrating. A significant portion of users — 32% — altogether avoid planning dates through dating apps.
- People use dating apps for various purposes, including finding serious relationships, casual dates, making new friends, or simply out of curiosity and entertainment.
- it was observed that 56% of users prefer to meet their match within a few days of connecting, indicating a desire for swift, in-person interactions, 24% of users prefer to wait 2–3 weeks before meeting while the remaining 20% of users prefer to wait a month or more before meeting in person.
- 68% of users feel anxious about planning dates after matching with someone.
- When it comes to actually planning dates, 80% of users prefer to discuss common interests with their match to find middle ground in deciding on date spots.
- Most people rely on places they’ve liked or visited before when planning dates with their match.
- Some common challenges faced by users while planning dates include:
-Difficulty in agreeing on date spots
-Finding mutually convenient locations
-Concerns about safety
-Discussing budgets. - About 68% of users expressed interest in having date suggestions tailored to both parties’ preferences.
Below are key findings from the open-ended responses from the survey showcasing the patterns and themes that emerged from those responses, organised into an affinity map to visualise better and understand the user responses.
While some of the concerns from above may not directly address the specific conversations about where to meet, eat, and what to do, they can indirectly impact the decision-making process and add to the overall confusion and indecisiveness even before planning dates.
Insights gained from User Interviews
After collecting user responses I managed to personally interview 3 people to closely know about their experience of using dating apps, and planning dates through them.
This was done in order to know the personal opinions of the users and feel the deepness of the issue.
USER 1 (F, 22)
Apps Used: Bumble, Hinge
(Ambivert, experimental)
“Most of the dates don’t even happen”
and after matching most of the people leave the conversations in between, it’s hard to gauge people if they’re even interested in you.
Even if you reach the date planning stage,
“they often want to shift to other apps such as instagram for planning out dates”
USER 2 (F, 21)
Apps Used: Bumble, Hinge
(Extrovert, Sociable, outgoing)
She doesn’t find date planning to be hard because some people out there take the lead on their own.
Some sweet and people out there ask questions about my hobbies or preferences in order to know me, and on the basis of that they come up with ideas and suggest the places to meet.
“You don’t have to work a lot on asking out, perks of being a women sometimes”
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“As long it is a public place and you’re chilling around, good to go”
USER 3 (M,23)
Apps Used: Tinder, Bumble
(Introvert but open to new experiences)
Not a hardcore dating app user but have planned only one date till now, that too couldn’t happen.
I feel dating apps are a hopeless place, and some profiles are not detailed enough.
“there should be some information that should be necessary to be or made compulsory to be filled, to be sure of profile genuineness”
“it’s quite frustrating seeing those disappointing profiles”
What I understood from the User research?
Interestingly many of the challenges that were discovered during secondary research phase gets validated through the primary research. These recurring themes across both research types highlight the universality of these pain points.
The identified pain points
- Planning the date is not that big of a problem for users but is definitely an added problem and requires effort, leading to procrastination or sometimes avoidance.
- Users feel anxious about organising dates all alone, contributing to a negative overall experience.
- Most of the users display desire in swift in-person meetings, indicating they’re more eager to know people by meeting rather than waiting for days.
- Determining a partner’s level of interest in certain activities or locations is time consuming process, sometimes lead to mismatches in later stages.
- Finding a mutually agreeable and convenient location for the date is a common source of frustration.
- Other identified issues which indirectly affects the user decisions in planning dates with their match includes profile Genuineness & safety concerns.
Crafting User Persona
Now having identified the major user pain points and challenges, it is essential to empathise with our users and design the solutions keeping in mind their needs.
For this purpose, I created a persona which will serve as a representative of our core user group and help in guiding our decisions ensuring impactful solution development.
What is the “True Problem” ?
Re-defined Problem
The users of bumble are facing too many problems and the added task of planning a date becomes overwhelming and adds more to their cognitive load.
The indecision in planning dates is driven by a combination of factors such as misaligned expectations, safety concerns ,social anxiety, and a lack of decision-making support from the app.
Who are Facing this problem?
The frequent users of the dating app aged between 18–35(mostly college going and working professionals) , who have a busy schedule.
Who are overwhelmed with the process of date planning and seek In-App support for planning their dates.
Ideation begins..
Before ideation it’s necessary to state our goals and the flow of the app for which we’re working on-
Flow we need to work on:
Post-match flow i.e after the user has matched with someone and enters the state of planning a date/meeting with their match.
To make date planning(essentially choosing date spots) easier and effortless we have certain goals to achieve as per our research:
- Involving both partners for planning.
why?
As our research highlights there’s a bit of gender bias when it comes to planning dates and some people do not want to take the burden of planning dates all alone. - Help in gauging their partner’s interests about whether they want to meet and take things further.
why?
Users highlighted their frustration of getting ghosted and leaving them thinking whether the other person really want to meet or not. - Knowing about partner’s preferences without much of effort.
why?
Users displayed their desire to meet with people with people of similar interests and preferences, by knowing about other person’s preference beforehand will help in planning better dates. - Ensuring date suggestions bring new experiences and are convenient to both.
why?
Users also stated that mutually agreeing on a location is also a difficult task due to convenience, therefore convenience to both is necessary.
Brainstorming solutions
For each goal to fulfil, I came up with multiple ideas:
1. To involve both of users
- Collaborative decision making through voting on dating ideas suggested by app
- letting users set mood board together and then suggesting places to both as per mutual preferences.
2. To gauge readiness of your partner
- A switch or a toggle indicator if they’re ready to meet
- Changing colours of the chat to highlight the readiness
- Ping or wave on chat to tell them they’re ready
- Chat prompts like “ready to meet”
3. To know about partner’s preferences
- A mini quiz game and sharing their answers with each other.
- a tool to set preferences beforehand.
- Using icebreakers in conversation.
4. Suggesting places convenient to both
- Detecting locations and suggesting places somewhere in between.
- Manually adding distance preferences and suggesting places around that range.
- Giving options to users to state preferences or ready for compromise.
Synthesising and Finalising Solutions
For this purpose I dived deep into each of the ideas that I brainstormed to know what exactly can be done to implement these ideas and by amalgamating some of these ideas I came to the final solution.
- Partners can input their date preferences initially about different aspects of how a date should be.
- Then the app by using these preferences suggests date ideas that would match both users preferences.
- Both of the partners can like on these suggested date ideas as per their preference.
- If they like on the same idea, the app will highlight it and they can share that result in the chat allowing for discussion and finalising on places to visit.
Developing wireframes
Made few wireframe explorations and finalised a few to use in my High fidelity designs however exploration keeps on going till the the end.
Style guide
Final Designs
Major Iterations that took place in the process!
Try the Prototype on your own
My learnings
- Each iteration leads to a better outcome!
Since this was the first ever project I did I learn the importance of iterations, the iterations and different design explorations goes on till the end. - Feedbacks
Feedbacks allowed me to see through the users’ perspective and make more informed design decisions, each piece of feedback contributed in improving the design. - Documentation of thoughts
I learned the value of documenting every thought that comes to mind during the design process — each idea builds on the previous one, and paved the way to new ones!
✨Thanks for your time ✨
Reach me out at LinkedIn, for any further discussions, feedbacks or any potential collaborations!
