RESEARCH NEED
The meaning of personal relationships is constantly evolving, millennial are discovering new motives of choosing their partners. The needs and orientation of a relationship are no more linear. To understand the dating landscape and its dimensions, Truly Madly, a dating app in India conducted an evaluative research to create an appropriate positioning plank for its users.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
What does the space of dating and relationships entail for millennial in India?
What is the space that TRULY MADLY occupies vis-à-vis competition for this generation?
RESEARCH APPROACH
Understand the Universe of Meeting Platforms
User Personas, User ideologies, Cultural trends analysis in the dating space
social, psychographic & demographic factors, need gaps in the service offerings, competitive analysis
Understand the behavior of users for Product TM
usage and attitude, product feature analysis, triggers and barriers, engagement attributes
RESEARCH DESIGN
Peer Groups
Bring a friend along, a mix of users and non-users of dating app, irrespective of their relationship status invited to a coffee table discussion - Decoding the meaning of relationships; Identifying & classifying the relationship space in minds of today’s youth; Preferred realm of relationship and triggers and barriers for using an online platform for dating
User Immersions
One on One cognitive interview with users of TM and competition products delving deep to understand their needs and expectations from dating, interaction with their dating app and what keeps them engaged with the platform
The research was conducted in two metro cities of India – one from the North and one from the South to bring psychographic and demographic cuts into analysis.
The dating app, Truly Madly was considered non-frivolous, had a serious tone of communication with its users. With respect to its competitors, it was low on the engagement quotient and required to be decluttered with some of its information pages. Due to these reasons, it was constantly pushed into the matrimonial or the match making space, rather than cool and hip space for singles.
All the insights were welcomed and appreciated by the client, however few of them were implemented on the product.
To enhance the engagement, a few elements were added:
Sparks
An experimental conversation starter, singles can now initiate talking on some common interests
Sheroes
A sign up with a women initiative where women can take advice from other women in the community, they could also support any specific causeThe information pages were not decluttered but reorganized basis categories with an addition of images into each selection
RESEARCH ROLE
I am closely attached with this project as I bagged this assignment for my agency. I was involved with my team in the following stages of this research project:
Recruitment
I conducted recruitment through cold callings from the client database. Given that dating is an intimate space to discuss with users, recruitment was a challenging task. I also roped in some of the users through snowballing.
Project Management
I was the point of contact for launching the field work stage of this project. This included coordinating with teams at each field site and taking care of logistics at one of the sites. I also finalized the budget and contract for this study.
Facilitation
I created the discussion guide and moderated the user immersions at one of the field sites and was responsible for the first level data analysis for interviews conducted by me.
Research Highlights:
The team took to out of the box way of thinking to execute this research project. Apart from the client database, we also retorted to dating apps for recruitment. We spoke to our target audience through the medium of client product as well as competition products.
The research was conducted in outdoor setting rather than usability test labs. We met users and potential users in cafes and pubs to ensure the bright mood, which added value to our conversations in a big way.
To know more about the insights from this UX project, you can reach me on Linkedin.
