How did we get here?

This is Part 2 of the story of how I went about accepting a design challenge and developed 2 app/feature ideas from ideation to completion of the UI in Flutter in under 4 days.

Just to reiterate the why, it was primarily to serve as a way to show my prowess when it comes to cooking up wicked ideas in short spans of time, and having a clear go-to market strategy without over complicating things.

To at least get a ‘woah’ reaction out of the competition.

There was no way I could compete purely on a technical standpoint, because there was already a pool of really talented FlutterFlow devs participating. Where they excel in engineering, I played to my strengths in design and product dev.

Setting out to build not one but two app concepts, was also a way for me to push myself out of my comfort zone. To exercise the part of my brain that has the ability to mash things up together.

Why now?

By documenting this entire journey, it gives me a nice little segue into introducing my services that I offer, on my website. By doing so, I could not help but also wonder, could I inspire others to do the same? After all, I was taking cues from the guys on Twitter, Product Hunt, Reddit, Dribbble.

I could not imagine myself doing vlogs, just cause of my awkwardness in front of a camera. That was a challenge I was saving to conquer another day. So that eventually led me down the line of writing them down.

Problem is, I never actually wrote anything that I thought was worthy for mass consumption. But I did have a daily habit of writing in my journal. This would directly be the cause of the tone I am using while writing this out. It could also come out sounding a little draggy. But hey, we can only improve from here right?

The Aha! moment.

Fortunately, or unfortunately (not tryna offend either side) for me, I have not had the pleasure of using Tinder for its intended purpose. I say it with a caveat, because during my career as a PM, Tinder was one of my favourite apps to study. The way they monetised and kept their users engaged willingly, was a masterclass on its own.

Whether I used it or not, as I do with any apps, my scrutiny of it, made me understand what a great tool it is to actually help people find love. But its novelty is as short lived as a butterfly’s. Users who eventually end up finding their love, stop using the app, rightfully so.

The stories that I hear about my friends and their individual experiences. From the most nerdy chap, to the most modest girls, all the way to your wild ones that have booze-laden nights chronicling one of their many Tinder dates to me. And of course, the Tinder Swindler show on Netflix that got the world buzzing.

How could I contribute to what I think is already a great app?

You would be surprised at how many varied answers you would get from all types of people. There is no real right answer. We just never know till we put it to test. That is how I work on adding features to already established apps.

Of all the stories I have come across, there was one common theme. As much as it could be a fun and innocent dating app, it brings with it some bad actors. Stories like the victims of the Tinder Swindler, hurt when I imagine that happening to one of my family members. How could I possible tackle that tricky question?

It usually starts with ‘If only I could….’ and then it hit me. All the social media companies were flocking towards charging their users for being ‘blue tick’ verified at $8/mth. What if Tinder did the same, that allowed matching parties to run a Flag Check on each other, without being notified of the results that was obtained anonymously from their previous matches?

Not a social score, but just a little popularity contest, as judged by your past matches. We average it out and let the person requesting know the count of green vs red flags.

How I started work on it.

Right after I wrapped things up drawing FMYX’s paper sketches, I took a quick break and started on the screens for this. Again, I had to pick out the 4 screens in my head, while running through the flow, to see which best narrates the story of what exactly the feature does.

The tight deadlines, forces simpler designs.

Another thing the indie dev community taught me on Twitter, is that the time to market is more important than the finer details. We are no Apple to be spending too much time figuring out if we are a pixel off. That is not to say we ship sub-par products, but we need some idea of, if it’s worth polishing, before doing so.

Since it was building a feature on top of Tinder, this allowed me to shorten the time needed to design. I did not have to focus on the design style, and just adapted mine with Tinder’s.

Envisioning the feature to be something like a DM, that just took less than a second to respond, so as to lower the friction for users completing Flag Requests. Taking reference from some of the messaging apps, I had a structure in place.

With the wireframes. I did a more intricate paper sketch just to make sure I had every edge case covered.

How I built it.

When starting out this project on FlutterFlow, it was simpler. Thank God Tinder’s UI was pretty simplistic to begin with. To top that off, I was coming in hot a day after finish FMYX’s design on FlutterFlow.

Full steam ahead, I was done with the 4 screens in record time. Quite safely the fastest i have designed 4 entire UIs in FlutterFlow, that run as expected. It almost felt like as if whatever I had learnt on FMYX allowed me to move faster on this one.

Entry to End, in 3-4 key presses.

A personal opinion, to showcase your idea in pictures, 4-5 images within 4 key touches from a user should provide the most clarity without losing their interest.

With the deadline about 6hrs away, I put this one to rest, while I started preparing the images for submission. I also wanted to make sure the images shared were of good quality. Consider it some form of marketing.

About an hour out from the deadline, I submitted both my entries for the contest. It was scary, but I did not doubt my skills and decided to push the Tweet button. Structured them well in threads, and thought they read well too.

Where I am with this project now?

There is no way I was going to build a dating app from scratch. The space is crowded, and every new entrant is just throwing in a dash of their specialty as the highlight. The end goal and the customer lifetime value is pretty much the same across.

You do not want to turn off the existing users.

When coming up with features for already established apps, you must be very careful not to piss the wrong tribe off. Changes will be received in mixed feelings, but it is your duty to protect their best interest at heart, while fulfilling the company’s.

Perhaps this catches the eyes of the right person and I could get a new business in. But other than that, this is one of those practice ideas, worth scratching just for the fun of it.