Blind Love Letters
Overview
CLIENT OVERVIEW
Blind Love Letters is a virtual dating service that fosters more genuine connections between users through digital letter writing, anonymously.
The concept of meeting someone online is revolutionary in the sense that it opens up more possibilities to find that special someone. However, many virtual dating services have created an environment where profile pictures, short biographies, and instant messaging are pillars meant to support a "relationship." Blind Love Letters (BLL) offers a service that is in its name: an opportunity to write digital letters to someone who's name and picture remains anonymous. The act of writing letters anonymously is meant to encourage deeper conversation based on common interested and experiences, and the digital platform allows for a more convenient and diverse pool of potential matches.
OBJECTIVE + MY ROLE
To re-brand Blind Love Letters in a way that mirrors their values and mission, and build the interface for their product.
As the Design Lead, I lead our three person team in creating branding guidelines and designing the user interface for BLL's landing page, web application, and company interface for managing matches and profiles. I worked with cross-functional teams, primarily with the the Technical Development and Marketing Teams.
Final Design Solution
In-House Application
Application
Users fill out an initial application that gauges their interests, hobbies, and experiences. It is then used to match them to potential matches through the Blind Love Letters Matching Algorithm.
Value-based matching is aimed at creating stronger and more authentic connections between users, instead of matching or swiping based on appearances and potentially disingenuous biographies.
User Portal
Once Users start their journey with Blind Love Letters, they are taken into their custom user portal where they can view potential matches, keep tabs on their match journey, update their profile, and listen to some romantic tunes as they write their letters to their match.
User Portal: Dashboard, Profile, Progress Page, Letter Inbox
How it works:
Users can only match with one person at a time.
This match is determined if both people like each other's initial letter, the more in-depth equivalent to a short biography that includes ones hobbies, interests, and relationship goals.
A user can un-match at any time.
They can go to their Letter Board on their Progress page to view new potential matches, and review letters that they have saved in the past.
While matched, users write to each other through their inbox in their portal. This ensures safety and security between users in case anything goes awry, and also keeps track of the number of letters they have sent back and forth. Once users send 7 letters each, their identities are unlocked and a Cupid (case manager) sets them up on a Zoom call. From there, it is up to them to maintain the connection!
Design Process
01 - Defining the Brand
Blind Love Letters had already created a few color palettes and marketing materials for their brand by the time the new design team came in.
OLD STYLES AND MARKETING COLLATERAL
We wanted to redirect the brand so that it aligned more with the values of BLL and the tone that they hoped to set, which was Realism: Modern Day Romance. We identified 4 core values based on their mission and goals, and analyzed a few mood boards that were created courtesy of the Marketing team based on these values.
VALUES
MOODBOARDS
Moodboards created by BLL Growth Team
Moodboards created by BLL Growth Team
02 - Final Style Guide
Because of the copyright aspect of using online photos, the design team decided to go with an illustrative base for the brand, executing the value of creativity through illustrations that have a scrapbook edge to mimic the physical craftiness of real letters into a digital space. The colors were chosen based on a combination of the mood boards, to represent a romantic, ethereal tone for modern day romance. The fonts were chosen to represent letter writing experience that is legible in the digital sphere.
03 - Applying the Brand: Landing Page Re-Design
You can view the Blind Love Letters website here.
I led our team in a one week design sprint to design different iterations for the landing page. We wanted to add in dynamic elements and feature the main steps of the BLL service. We used Figma and Adobe Illustrator.
04 - UX/UI Design: Designing the Blind Love Letters Product
First, I led the team in creating a site map so that we could understand the architecture of Blind Love Letters from when a user fills out an application to join to their user portal. We identified four main areas of interaction for the user while using BLL:
Where can they update their interests and hobbies? Profile Page
Where can they find new matches? Progress page
Where can they monitor their journey status (number of letters written with current match)? Progress Page
Where can they write and receive letters? Letter Inbox
Where can they get a preview of this information + fun extras? Dashboard
SITEMAPPING
Site Map
Then, we did another 1 week design sprint to come up with lo-fi wireframes for ideas on how to layout the four main sections of the portal and the in-house application.
My Contributions: Profile Page, Dashboard, Progress Page, and Letter Inbox
*I did not contribute to the design of the in-house application, though I did give design direction to my teammate, Iris Mamac, who created it. She is a creative designer and an awesome teammate!
WIREFRAMING
Wireframes for the User Portal: Profile Page, Progress Page, Letter Inbox, and Dashboard
05 - Final Prototype
We came together and after getting feedback from the rest of the BLL team, we decided on a few interfaces that we thought both made sense and were adaptable.
Dashboard: A functional and fun interface that includes:
• Current Match details
• likes on your initial letter
• Notifications
• Journey Progress
• Blind Love Letters Playlist
Profile Page
The profile page includes the users initial letter that all potential matches view before being officially matched. If two users like each other's letters, they will get a notification in their BLL inbox and are able to initiate a letter writing journey.
The details filled out in the application can be changed here as well.
Journey Progress
The Progress page includes information about the users current match (if the user has one) and a Letter Board that shows the user the initial letters of other potential matches that are filtered based on common interests and experiences.
Letter Inbox
The Letter Inbox acts as the users digital letter writing space: this is where they will write to their matches and receive letters back. This is also where they will communicate with their Cupid (case manager) about any issues they may have.
In order to make the letter writing experience more interactive and expressive, the user is able to add different kinds of media to their letter to mimic more of a scrapbooking and in-person sharing experience.
06 - Reflection
NEXT STEPS
More Testing and Iteration
Before leaving Blind Love Letters, I assisted with creating a user feedback guide so that we could get user input on our designs, not just company input. This interface needs to be tested and iterated upon based on user feedback.
Creating a Mobile Application
The next step would be to create the web application into a mobile application for convenience and to increase our user base.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Leading a remote team
My time with Blind Love Letters was my first experience leading a design team. I faced many challenges in terms of team delegation and direction, and my perfectionist mindset was challenged as I worked being better at trusting my teammates and sharing the design work. In addition, the BLL is a completely remote company - so we all had to navigate best practices for organizing our work, our tasks, and our ideas
Being a well-rounded designer
I found during my time with BLL that the designers work with everyone: the tech team, growth/marketing team, business development team, and the user research team. This was really eye opening in understanding the importance of being well-rounded as a designer.
WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY
More user research and UX Practices
I came in as the design lead at a somewhat awkward time - the concept had already been developed, and I was still starting out on my UX journey. Looking back on it now, I would have conducted more feedback and research sessions on our concept with potential users. In addition, our design team and user research team were separate, so I would have pushed for combining the two teams or working alongside each other more to yield for informed designs and to direct the user research team in finding out more about our competitors, and user feedback on the realm of virtual dating.