Imagine the situation would be if you were visually impaired? How simple would it be for you to find a person online?
How often would you think before revealing your disability to a person you have matched with?
How independent would your decisions be?
Would you be able to find a match without taking help from a trusted friend or family member?
Who motivates you in your endeavors?
How do differently-abled individuals use major dating platforms to find their partners?
We realized that almost all of them weren't accessible to disabled individuals. Our team decided to focus on improving the functionality for the visually impaired, i.e.. functionally blind individuals.
The first feature "RealVoice Profiles" records users' voices during setup to create a digital facsimile. Others can listen to their profile read by this facsimile. The second feature, "Community", is a safe space for blind users to seek advice from peers and discuss blind dating experiences. It centers around curated questions, enabling dynamic issue tackling and knowledge sharing.
Given that our user group was niche, we compiled a list of potential problems that the visually impaired might have. This list of problems became our initial context in thinking of potential design ideas.
Given that our user base was niche and it was not simple to find and interview blind people in a short timeframe, we started by empathizing with the users via academic journals and online videos as a form of Diary Study where blind and non-blind people shared their experiences in dating. The videos helped us understand the different viewpoints of both people, watch the behaviors of the blind, their preferences, insecurities, issues, and also how they feel when they go on a date.
From surveying users of dating apps in the general public who are not functionally blind, we gauged some information about whether or not they would be open to dating someone who is functionally blind if they were to meet on the app.
To empathize better with blind and non-blind users we created two personas to understand the challenges and goals of online dating.
For our initial ideation, we sketched and storyboarded around questions such as:
Using crazy 8's we focused on creating a large number of ideas and then narrowed down solutions based on quality and feasibility. We produced ideas on features a user would most want to have based on research we previously conducted while they navigated each phase of their dating process.
The feature takes a short recording of each user’s natural speaking voice collected during account setup and uses it to create a digital facsimile of their voice. Others can then listen to their profile read aloud to them by this digital facsimile.
The second feature called Community which serves as an exclusive safe space for blind users to seek help and advice from similarly abled users and talk about the pain points specific to the experience of dating while blind. The private community centers around posts that are created based off of a curated list of common questions relating to the blind dating experience. This feature would provide a way for users to tackle issues in a dynamic manner and engage in positive knowledge sharing.
In the interest of time, we had to resort to testing with sighted users. Speaking to sighted individuals, helped us gain perspective on how they would interact with the features. Since the audio feature would be common to both sighted and unsighted users we realized that it was imperative to ensure that we get feedback about how the feature can benefit them as well. The personas helped us empathize with factors that would help or affect the blind.
Next is the screen for enabling or disabling personalized voice transcription on profiles. When the user selects Enable Voice, If the user chooses to enable voice transcription, the next screen prompts them to read a short passage.
When the user clicks on the yellow play button, it transforms into a pause button, which the user can click to pause the recording. While the recording plays, the user can see how much time is remaining on the recording as the brown line that surrounds the edge of the yellow button winds down. After swiping left or right on the previous profile, the user lands on the next profile. Once again, the user can click on the yellow play to hear the voice transcription for the current profile in the profile owner’s voice.
To ensure blind users have a safe and free space to discuss experiences and learn from one another about various dating experiences, we have created a “Community Discussions” feature on the app. This feature is exclusive to blind users. The user can click on the community discussion button in the top right corner to access the community discussion page that is exclusive to blind users.
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