Pixer was created as an early school project with the objective to practice prototyping.

I was given the task to design a dating app where users have to talk to each other to gradually unlock fotos of the other one. While the main objective of the project was to practice prototyping and the time frame was not the most generous, I aimed to go through all stages of the Design Thinking Process, to let real user needs guide the design of this dating app.

The Design Thinking Process is divided into five stages: Emphasize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. To gather inights about dating apps and users I started out by researching the topic of online dating and interviewed dating app users. My research helped me define what pain points users had and who might be the target group for theis dating app in particular. Through mindmapping and sketching the app gained shape and features. 

Tools used:

Balsamiq for lofi wireframes

Figma for hifi prototypeing

To eliminat the pressure of superficiality, users create avatars instead of profile pictures. Suggested matches are based on common interests and biography content. By chatting and keeping conversations alive, while getting to know each other, users can answer quiz questions and unlock hidden content like pictures, spotify playlists and other integrated media on each others profiles. Testing the prototype with people within the target group indicated that the concept of unlocking content gradually and a gamified way of keeping conversations alive was met with positive attitudes. Suprisingly test users were requesting more automated features that could aid decision making when swiping between suggested profiles.

As one test user expressed it "People are terrible at writing interesting biographys. Future dating apps really need to find ways to help with that issue."