Rekindle app

Brief

Create an app that helps single parents find meaningful relationships, and improve with their dating situation given the obstacles they face.

Project done at Hyper Island

HIG

Human interface guidelines

UX Design

UI Design

App design

services

UX researcher, UX designer

Timeline

Oct 2024 - Dec 2024

Research objective

Understanding the needs of single parents in creating new relationships and dating in order to address opportunity areas.

This project will explore how single parents navigate the dating world, key motivations of single parents’ relationship choices, including emotional needs, family dynamics, difficulties and time management challenges, in order to come up with actionable insights.

Problem & Background

Single parents oftentimes struggle with finding new, stable partners. Our project serves to create a way of helping them find meaningful relationships, and improve their dating situation, given the obstacles that they face.

Solution

Our solution promotes offline meetings, and encourages the users to meet in real life after as short a period as possible, of writing.

With the app, there is an event creation feature - where users can host events for a larger amount of people, thus bridging the issue that many people have difficulties meeting peers in adulthood.

My Role

My contributions are as interviewer, and data analyst. I had a pivotal role for the synthesizing of data into insights.

All material from 02 Concept Development and forward, was done individually, by myself.

01.1 initial research

Evidently, there are numerous considerations when dating as a single parent. Desk research uncovered some common themes that were explored further.

Representatives of the focus group that were recruited.
One interviewee from Latvia.

Target group

Given the information that was found, the target group was narrowed, and subjects recruited that matched our criteria for qualitative data collection.

• Men and women, aged 25-39
• Who had children between ages 1-10 y/o
• Preferably living in Sweden

Problem statement "As a single parent with a young child, I often struggle with finding time to maintain new relationships, and to connect with people in a meaningful way. "

01.2 Qualitative data collection

Qualitative interviews

Based on the previous desk research, we focused on four main themes, which guided interview questions with representatives from the focus group: (1) Time constraints and limited time available due to their parenting responsibilities. (2) Finances. (3) Spontaneity, and less room for spontaneous activities. (4) Emotional considerations, mostly for their child's wellbeing.

Main research question: "What are the main obstacles for single parents who wish to find a new partner. "

Patterns AND "HOW MIGHT WE..."

Our findings from the interviews were synthesized into actionable insights, reoccurring themes were:

• Time management
• Not feeling certain that there was a connection with matches
• A desire to meet in person early on to gauge compatibility

Overview of synthesis and insights

02.1 Concept development

individual work from this point

User flow

The final part of the assignment was conducted individually. The two most important issues to resolve with the app were:

(1) to limit the time spent on the app.
(2) to ensure that the users know early if there is a connection worth pursuing.

Design challenge

How might we facilitate an efficient dating experience by shortening the path from match to meeting, while ensuring that the two parties have a good chance of being compatible?

02.2 wire flow

Our goals

Given the friction experienced by our target users, with current options or other services, I circled the areas of opportunities:

(1) Transparency - Users can show their intentions and baggage right away
(2)

- The wire flow maps out the process of signing up and creating a profile, to attending and hosting events.

Design choices & features

#1 Dating offline - The app promotes meeting outside the digital space, with a limit of matches and messages that can be sent. The event feature ensures that the user is making the most of their time - and can attend dating meet-ups and after works to socialise with others.

The primary intention being romantic meetings, but an unofficial consequence is socialising and making friends.

#2 Loss of motivation and interest - The users show their intentions clearly by their profile, and potential matches can decide early on if it's something to pursue.

#3 A clash of expectations - Based on the choices and preferences selected, the user is presented with possible matches of similar mind. To counter the sea of irrelevant matches.

A score is presented to see how well the users matches.

03 Deliverables

Rekindle is an app that promotes offline dating, and a quick transition from match to meeting.

"Like speed dating, but casual"

Intentionally limited

To solve the issue of getting stuck in the writing-phase, the app has a limited amount of messages that can be sent, thus encouraging the users to decide early on if they want to meet in person.

There is also a limitation on the amount of matches a user can have. To ensure that users are thoughtful of the matches they make, and remain active with the other person.

Event creation

If users find it difficult to connect via text, the app also features event creation. And users can host e.g. after works or child-friendly events, that others can sign up for.

There is an option to invite matches, and users can also attend by themselves to socializmee several people in one go. Like speed dating, but casual.