Cuppa, Trustworthy Dating App

Overview

Cuppa is a dating app that aims a serious relationship for successful professionals. This outline explains how I developed a product for users looking for serious relationships through safe and reliable information.

My role

My role as the sole designer and co-founder consists of building the end-to-end mobile experience by leading the design sprint, creating prototypes, and producing promotional materials for marketing.

Background

Dating app
for serious relationship?

Due to the surge in dating apps in the Korean market, we had to come up with an innovative concept to compete with them. Through surveys and user interviews, we discovered that 28 percent of users are frustrated with most dating apps that tend to have a casual environment, making it difficult to make meaningful commitments.

Current User Problems

What's your difficulty?

Difficult to find someone for serious relationship online

People judge and choose others by swiping profile pic for one or two second

Cannot trust other users’ identity and information

Persona

Who’s it for?

James, 33

Engineer at Samsung

He is a tech-savvy as works for an IT company, usually works late two or three times a week.

He has broken up two years ago and had a few blind dates, but he couldn't find any nice person.

He has used some dating apps, but it looks like appearance is important, so it discouraged him to use them.

User Goal

What do you want?

“I wanna find a nice person for serious relationship online”

Wanting to meet a nice person is a common goal for most singles, but the definition of a nice person fluctuates depending on the person and what channel they’re using. I dug deeper into what the user's goals are in terms of an online dating app for serious relationships.

Assumptions

Who is a nice person in terms of dating app?

With detailed profile information
Users can get to know others as much as possible. An insufficient information means that it gives the user insecurity.

Working for a reputable company
It is the most effective information between strangers in Korea, It verified the other users' identity.

Constantly accesses the app
User’s latest active time is quite crucial, which shows whether they are a fake user or not.

Good chatting manner
The well-mannered in terms of dating app means that the other behave polite in chatting and respond in a quick.

Opportunity

Trust is crucial for a serious relationship

Users feel they are ready to open themselves up to a relationship when they feel they have sufficient information about the potential match.

Hypothesis

How might we create a reliable dating app for a serious relationship

By providing information in a reliable way,
users will focus on the others’ personality that leads to a serious relationship

#Chat Request Rate #Revenue

If it helps users to create a better profile info and have a better conversation, users will engage in having relationship with others

#Matching Success Rate #Revenue

MVP Experience

To swiftly validate the hypothesis, we initiated the MVP launch using insights from the initial user survey and interviews. Subsequently, we obtained user feedback for the prompt iteration.
• Users want to get additional cards to see more dating candidates.
• Chat request rate is low from the profile page.
• No profile picture is challenging to make a decision for some users.‍

Get some card
for you

Users will see the preliminary information such as the age, company name, the job, and a one-liner about themselves. This one-liner will show their personality and mark their first impression on the user.I added the action of flipping the card to view more information to allure the user’s curiosity. This card design refers to the Korean culture of professionals exchanging their business cards.

Check out
who they are

Various information allows users to connect with their potential matches and make a decision to further conversation. To add warmth with the engagement,
I believed the app needed an emotional touch such as providing a voice recording.

The impact

21.8%

Chat Request Rate

13.5%

Matching Rate

To acquire new users, we promoted a campaign that hand out a promo code and Starbucks coffee to the potential users by using Facebook ads and online community. In the first six months, the metrics rose slowly, but not rapidly.

Hyun

Google Playstore

I would have preconceptions about the others before talking when I saw the profile picture in other apps, but in this app, I could talk to the other person first and see if it suits me.

Jinhee

Email to Cuppa

I didn't expect to find my husband from the dating app.
I could meet someone closer to my ideal type of person, and
we will finally get married on May 2nd!. We'd like to invite you to the wedding! I really appreciate for your app.

Many users sent us some thank-you email and left a positive review on the app store. We could observe the number of mature users who are using the app more than 3 times a week has been increasing constantly.

Concluding Thoughts

Cuppa was a big challenge as it was the first project for me to start a start-up, which meant I had no financial support and I should work as multiple roles with designer role. Since I didn’t have any data or knowledge background about dating app, it was great learning in driving a user-voice-driven development process.

Thanks for watching!