BUMBLE BFF: FRIEND-MATCHING ON A DATING PLATFORM
Duration: 2 week
Role: Lead Designer
Bumble has moved into the friend-matching market, but has found that the process is different than searching for a romantic partner. This concept project, we evaluated this current approach and found new ways to refine and add features to improve the friendship search.
RESEARCH:  HOW DO WE MAKE FRIENDS?
The research started with our own assumption of how do we make friends? It lead us to “a shared interest” as the based of all friendships. We asked our users that same question and found out some interesting information along the way.
USER SURVEY
  • 14 of 16 response felt comfortable meeting more in person.
  • 10 of 16 response like to meet one on one.
USER INTERVIEWS
  • 100% felt that interest was the common ground for any successful friendship.
  • 6 of 8 users felt weird about swiping left and right to match with a friend.
  • 7 of 8 users felt iffy about people's profile. Everything from fake profile to wanting to be more than friends.
Website Campaign June
Website Campaign May
There was a lot to uncover from our 8 interview affinity map. With this given timeline we went back to what was important to our project.
Bumble wants to evaluate the current effectiveness of this approach and determine ways to refine and add features to make the friendship search more effective.
RESEARCH:  THE BEES KNEES OF OUR FINDINGS
To go along with share common interest. We discovered our users wanted early verification during on-boarding and a way to help facilitate meet up in person quickly.
  • Could add more verification protocols to make sure the identity of the person is real.
  • The interests you share should
    be highlighted.
  • Give users a reminder to schedule a meeting with a calendar function.
  • Provide a question game to break the ice and make it less awkward in the chat.
MosCow MethodUser Journey
HOW WE GOT HERE: SIMPLIFYING OUR AFFINITY MAP INTO 5 PARTS
VERIFICATION AND SAFETY
  • There is no way to verify if any of the information on these sites is true or not. I am concerned for my safety, and don't want to be catfished.
  • Your social media persona may not reflect who you are in person.
  • I find friends of friends more trust worthy, because they are accounted for.
  • People misuse the platform by using it for dating rather than for friendship.
CRAFTING YOUR PROFILE
  • A well crafted profile will definitely attract my attention.
  • The more a person shares about themselves on their profile the more interested I am in connecting with them (ex: interests, images).
SIMILAR INTEREST
  • If we have something in common it becomes easier to connect and relate to each others experiences.
TIME CONSUMING
  • Creating meaningful relationships takes time.
  • Scheduling time to meet with new people is difficult.
LOW PRESSURE
  • Meeting people through an app in a new place takes the pressure off of putting yourself in social situations.
  • I feel that group chats are a less stressful environment because all of us share the same interests and motivate each other to pursue it.
LOW PRESSURE
  • Meeting people through an app in a new place takes the pressure off of putting yourself in social situations.
  • I feel that group chats are a less stressful environment because all of us share the same interests and motivate each other to pursue it.
IDEATION:  IT'S A BEE-AUTIFUL THING
The current state of BumbleBFF has interest filters only for paid users. Thats about 3% of the Bumble’s users according to a 2022 study. That leaves us with 97% to design for.
  • To better help the 97% of the free users. We highlighted the shared interest that you already shared with BumbleBFF during the onboarding process. This makes it easier for free users to better filter out profile on the fly.
  • Calendar integration was our second MVP. This gave the users a quick way to set up available time to meet in person after they had matched.
  • Our 3rd MVP we focused on was the swiping mechanics. We wanted to see how swipe up and down on friends reacted during user testing. As one user describe the current Bumble BFF swiping as “mean”
HOW WE GOT HERE:  USER TESTING
  • 2/3 Users didn’t want to filter out their ideal friend. Users wanted be shown people with similar interests based off
    their profile.
  • 3/3 Users loved that it was quickly scannable to find commonalities or
    shared interests. 
  • 3/3 Found calendar was a little hard to understand from our user testing. There wasn't a legend to help guide through the different types of circles.
  • 2/3 testers felt rejection doesn’t feel as harsh compared to swiping. Same users wanted feedback though after clicking reject or accept. 
PROJECT TAKEAWAYS
There were many paths to take on this project. I'm glad this project was aided by using the MoSCow method to focus on which feature to design. The user interviews we conducted gain some insight into what users wanted, and a lot of data was collected that could be used to inform future decisions.
  • Look further into the verification, and see how we can make it safer and more trustworthy.
  • We wanted to go deeper into the journey of 2 people becoming friends after their BumbleBFF Match
  • Conduct A/B testing for our calendar feature thats inside the catch
  • We will explore how features such as matching mutual friends and creating low-pressure group settings can benefit Bumble.
  • We wanted to look into providing more incentive for users to meet outside, bumble approved spaces.
MY GOAL
If I were to continue the project, my goal is to increase paid users from 3% to 5% by adding group activity feature in the same vein as MeetUp. Reason? User interviews showed interest in group activities and making friends by doing activities that they like.

PHILLIP LEE