Communication Redesign

The ultimate goal for online dating is to make connections with people. I was fortunate to lead design efforts to completely redesign how eharmony users achieved this goal.

How it Worked

The communication process was rigid and confusing. However, some people liked being guided through conversations.

How it Looked

Here you can see the stages a little clearer. There’s not much that looks like a familiar message platform until you get to the end.

User Goals

  • Improve communication success (2-way)
  • Make communication intuitive
  • Continue to support a guided experience

Business Goals

  • Increase volume of communication
  • Increase reply rate
  • Increase conversion rate

Ideation

We gathered known data and reframed opportunities from multiple perspectives. I suggested a modified Design Sprint process to quickly generate and validate concepts.

Designing Solutions

Increasing fidelity helped me explore and test how each concept would integrate into the current system. Having less concepts allowed me to dive deeper into specific UI controls, organization and interactions. I also devoted time to prototyping to get a better sense of things.

Wire-flows

I began fleshing out detailed use cases with wire-flows looking for dead-ends and confusing pathways. It helped me quickly test different ways of organizing views.

Usability Testing

Combining InVision and UserTesting.com allowed us to rapidly prototype and gather feedback throughout the process. With the help of our UX Researcher, we were able to turn around most tests in a couple days.

Cross-Platform Considerations

Throughout the process we had to keep in mind the differences between each platform. For instance, when to use native UI familiar to the platform, or custom UI familiar to the product experience.

Scalable Platform

We built a platform that allowed us to iterate and optimize over time. This was near impossible with the original feature. Here, you can see the progression where new features were added and visual design was updated.

Communication Feature Performance

The redesigned communication feature launched in December, 2016. Over a year, we were able to successfully iterate towards significant engagement and conversion gains.

+20%

Total Comm Volume

+100%

2-way Comm Year-over-year

+20%

Subscriptions From Comm