Third Wheel
Design Conceptualization & Prototyping
Third Wheel is a dating app that brings a fresh perspective to online matchmaking by integrating friends and family into the process
MY ROLE
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
Usability Test Moderator
METHODS
Secondary Research | Competitive/Comparator Analysis | User Surveys | Love Letter/Break-Up Letter | Affinity Diagramming | User Journey Mapping | Mid-Fidelity Prototyping | Usability Testing | Information Architecture Diagramming | High-Fidelity Interactive Prototyping | Design System
The Teammates: Erick Rome | Connor Steffens | Jonah Wang
Deliverables:
Interactive Prototype
Annotated Wireframes
Project Background
The Birth of Third Wheel
Third Wheel was developed by Billy and Megan Mzenga, who wanted to create a more supportive and less stressful dating environment. They've observed challenges, stress, and frustration experienced by single individuals in the online dating world - particularly individuals who are trying to find long-term, serious relationships.
How is Third Wheel Different From Current Platforms?
Unlike traditional dating apps that often focus on superficial connections, Third Wheel emphasizes community, collaboration, and deeper relationship development. The app revolutionizes the online dating experience by allowing trusted friends and family members—referred to as the "crew"—to participate in vetting potential matches for their close friends. It aims to make the dating journey a collective experience rather than a solo endeavor.
The Problem
Why is online dating such a daunting endeavor?
In the digital dating world, many singles struggle to find compatible and serious partners. Existing dating apps can feel impersonal, stressful, and often lead to frustration due to the infinite swiping framework of current apps. Many users abandon their online search efforts due to the lack of serious connections, dying conversations, and hesitancy to take relationships offline into the real world. Third Wheel sets out to solve these problems by transforming online dating into a shared experience that reduces stress for the single and improves the quality of matches and potential for developing a serious off-app relationship.
How can we leverage community in order to improve the dating experience?
Close-knit groups of friends often have a deep understanding of their single friend's personality, values, and preferences. Why not leverage this strength in order to help identify potential partners who could be truly compatible with their single friend in the digital world? Off screen, friends are frequently trying to set up each other with potential partners. But as we age, our circle of friends and acquaintances tends to shrink as we hone in on spending more quality time with the people that matter most to us.
This valuable insight comes from shared experiences and genuine investment in their friend's happiness. Because of this, friends can make thoughtful, well-informed suggestions that go beyond surface-level criteria - maybe even finding a potential match that the single would have written off for some superficial reason. By leveraging an individuals close community, crew members can help steer their friend toward meaningful connections that are aligned with their deeper needs and long-term goals.
Research & Insights
To dive into this problem space and get a thorough picture of the user experience with online dating, the team dove into secondary research, competitive and comparator analysis, creating a user survey, and synthesizing user interviews provided to us by our client.
Understanding the Dating App Landscape
There is a disconnect between the experience current dating apps provide (like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble) and user's goals of finding a long-term, meaningful connection. These popular apps prioritize superficial decisions based on photos, instead of honing in on values and emotional maturity. Many users expressed dissatisfaction with current dating apps - particularly the infinite swiping and lackluster connections.
“I’m excited about an app that does more than just swiping left or right. I leave behind apps that constantly lead to nothing other than just another superficial match that never turns to anything serious.”
I took on the task of performing a competitive and comparator analysis on other dating apps out there. I took two approaches to this:
Understanding the target audience and user experience within each app to compare and contrast how Third Wheel could be different
Gathering screenshots of user flows in order to help inform the team’s design decisions. We wanted to keep the app simple and avoid breaking any mental models of the user interface within the dominant dating apps.
Competitive Analysis: Target Market. Understanding the target audience of current dominating dating apps was crucial in deciphering aspects that were of value to add into the development of Third Wheel.
Competitive Analysis: Design Choices. Our team wanted to focus on leveraging current mental models within dating apps in order to make onboarding and interface interaction intuitive for users.
So what is it really like trying to find a serious relationship on these dating apps?
Two words sum up the user experience quite well: overwhelming and disheartening.
Many users find themselves endlessly swiping through profiles with little to show for it, leading to a sense of hopelessness in finding their person. When there is a successful match, the conversations are awkward, superficial, and will most likely fizzle out before even meeting up in person. This leaves users feeling disconnected and unfulfilled.
“I want someone who is real who wants a honest relationship. I’m hoping that I can meet someone organically and the lessons I learned from online dating can make me a better partner.”
For individuals who are prioritizing maturity, shared values, and lifestyle commonalities, apps like Tinder are not providing a solution for this problem space. These apps are impersonal and puts pressure on singles to navigate tis space on their own. This adds to felt stress and user burnout. They often give up their online dating era before finding a long-term relationship and begin looking elsewhere or hoping they are able to meet someone offline.
User Journey: My teammates Erick and Connor synthesized everything we learned about the user experience in order to visualize how Third Wheel can change the online dating landscape.
Design Strategy
Our design strategy was rooted in the principles of crew engagement, simplicity and clarity, facilitating genuine connections, and reducing the current stress and anxiety felt by users.
The 4 core interactive aspects of Third Wheel
Single Users' Account Creation and Preference Setting: Ensuring the onboarding process was smooth and intuitive, while also assisting in building out values based profiles was important to solve the core problem Third Wheel is addressing.
Crew Invitation Process: In order to jumpstart the crew's activity in the app, the invitation process had to be streamlined, allowing singles to easily invite their crew and get the matching process rolling quickly.
Crew Collaboration on Matchmaking: Engagement of crew members in the app was a non-negotiable aspect of Third Wheel. Our team brainstormed various ideas on how to get the crew members engaged and interacting with the app on a frequent basis.
Connection Process Between Vetted Matches: We needed to flesh out how exactly the connection process would happen on two fronts: the crew approving a potential match, and the single also either approving or disapproving that same match. We wanted to ensure that the final decision was in the hands of the single individual.
Fleshing out the user flow within Third Wheel
We got to whiteboarding as a team and explored various user flow options within the app, both from the crew’s UI and the single’s UI. We quickly learned that there are a lot of moving parts within a designed dating app. There were many aspects of user navigation that we continued to discover as we iterated over our design.
Site Map: We continued to fall back on our original site map when we hit roadblocks within the design process. The goal of our work here was to focus in on these major user interactions, which helped guide our design as we iterated over the app throughout the project.
Design Solution
Bringing Third Wheel to life
Our team dove into Figma and we put our minds together to jumpstart our vision for Third Wheel. Our guiding principles steered us through any ambiguity, and we honed in on ensuring the user experience would be fun, engaging, and reduce stress. In addition to the standard account and profile creation, we developed three unique features:
Crew Hub: A centralized place where crew members could view profiles, discuss potential matches, and make collective decisions
Match Carousel: A limited number of daily profiles were shown to users based on an algorithm analyzing preferences and compatibility. This ensured that users didn't feel overwhelmed by an endless stream of options and supported intentional swiping.
CupidGPT: An AI assistant designed to help users come up with icebreakers and date ideas based on mutual interests
Match Carousel: When crew members click on “Find A Match”, they are taken to the carousel, which populates the set number of profiles that they are able to view per day.
CupidGPT: our AI integration allows single users to leverage a chat bot in order to help brainstorm conversation ice breakers and date ideas based on common interests.
Let’s see how this works out in the wild
We conducted 2 rounds of concept and usability testing to gain a deeper understanding of the user experience. We gained some really great insights that we took into consideration as we iterated on our design and user flow.
8/8 users were intrigued by the idea of using their community to help find them a potential match.
The CupidGPT feature was overwhelmingly favored, with users stating that they often struggle with initiating a first date that would feel fun and engaging for both singles.
There were concerns about ripcords within profile creation because users wanted to uphold their autonomy, so we integrated some explanatory/disclaimer screens that allowed users to navigate the app on their own accord.
Crew Hub: Once crew members log in, they are taken to their landing page, where profiles are categorized under “#1 match”, “Sent to [Single]”, and “Find a Match”. The #1 Match profile is the person that the crew has rated highest for their friend, the Sent to [Single] section populates profiles that the crew has shared to their single. There is also an interactive “Crew Thoughts” screen that encourages crew engagement and discussion.
Final Delivery
Our work came to an end and we finished off with a client hand-off meeting, where we talked through our design process, key insights, and interactive prototype. As a team, we presented our group project during a 15 minute presentation, where we talked through our design rationale and how our solution solves user problems.
Next Steps
Iterating and refining Third Wheel would help in user navigation, flow, and engagement with the app, while also helping narrow down the target market.
Develop a marketing strategy that highlights the unique selling points of Third Wheel, such as community involvement and stress reduction in dating
Further develop gamification elements, such as rewarding crew members for successful matches or offering achievements for participation.