Bumble BFF: A Case Study In Building Friendships

Summary

The idea that healthy relationships are a key component to living a happy life isn’t a new notion. In fact, it is the founding idea that Bumble, the twenty-first century’s premier dating app, has built its success upon. However, relationships are more than just love, relationships can also mean friendships. Bumble has definitely cemented itself as a powerhouse on the dating scene and now they have begun their foray into building friendships. As our first team project at General Assembly, we were excited to dig in.

From the outset of this project, the main problem was clear to us: Bumble BFF is too similar to the Bumble dating platform. In addition, you can only search for friends of the same gender and you must make a binary choice on whether or not you want to connect with another person, match or no-match. We needed to dissect the anatomy of friendships and test the current parameters of Bumble BFF to decide the best way to implement changes.

Research Phase

Role: Project Manager

Team: Isabella Zemella and Shannon Cotner

Tools: Figma, Miro, Trello, Slack, Zoom

Timeline: 2 Week Sprint

C&C Analysis

We began by looking at the competitive and comparable apps to Bumble BFF so that we could gain a better understanding of dating and friend finding apps as a whole. Second, we wanted to look at the functionality and features of various applications to best extrapolate a starting point for any potential design changes. We looked at other friend-finding apps to see how they functioned, what they did best, what they did differently than Bumble, and what features they brought to the table.

Through the C&C analysis, we were able to identify a few trends.

• Most friend-finding apps only allowed for a binary choice, match, or no-match.
• Some apps were gender restrictive like Bumble where users can only meet people of the same gender.
• The key finding was that all of the other friend-finding apps were their own independent application.

Now we had the beginnings of a road map, we needed to dig deeper into why Bumble BFF was struggling to be a success.

User Interviews

We interviewed seven people, who had either used the app previously or were currently using the app to find friends. Although we asked more than ten questions, these were the key questions that drove the interviews:

• What motivates you to find a friend-finding app?
• How do you stay in touch with your friends?
• What challenges have you encountered when trying to make new friends?

Affinity Mapping

We used the affinity mapping technique to synthesize the information gathered from the user interviews, by doing this we were able to develop a few key insights to help us further drive our research.

• Most users have a FB account and they use it regularly.
• They use texting as the main way to keep in touch with their friends.
• People use Bumble BFF in the hopes of finding a meaningful friendship.
• Bumble BFF would be easier to use if it was a separate app.

Persona

Based on the information gathered, we were able to create a persona to represent our target user. By doing this we can continue to focus on the main problems that our users face. Meet Lisa. She is a 31-year-old Financial Account Manager that just recently moved to Chicago. She has been using Bumble BFF in an effort to make new friends, but she finds it frustrating because it feels too much like a dating app.

Problem Statement

In addition to the thorough user interviews, we conducted five usability tests on the current Bumble BFF so that we could better identify potential pain points for our users. Based on the observations made in the testing we were able to hone in on the main problem:

Lisa needs a way to make lasting, meaningful friendships because she just moved to a new city and has trouble meeting people with similar interests.

This led us to the ideation of some probable solutions so we can keep our designs centered on the user:

• How might we create a way for Lisa to meet new people?
• How might we connect Lisa with others who share her interests?
• How might we provide a way for Lisa to easily communicate with new connections?

Journey Map

To best illustrate the current experience of the Bumble BFF and the pain points that were identified in our usability testing, we created a journey map.

Our key findings were:

• Users found it confusing that friends and dates were managed in the same application.
• Users were focused primarily on finding people with common interests, i.e. music, hiking, etc.
• Users thought it felt too much like a dating app than a friend-finding app.
• One user said, “Swiping feels judgmental…”

Design Phase

Design Solutions

• Based on these insights we brainstormed the following recommendations:
• Create a standalone Bumble BFF app
• Eliminate the binary decision of selecting a friend
• Implement events feature for users to attend together
• Incorporate a system to manage friendships
• Eliminate match-only messaging

Our goal by implementing the above recommendations was to help users connect with people who share their interests and hobbies, while also creating an avenue for users to book and share events with their friends. Furthermore, Bumble BFF doesn’t have a cohesive way to manage the connections that you make and we wanted to implement a way for users to effectively manage their friendships.

Mood Board

When we started to design the new app we began to think about what friendships mean to our users. Friendship sounds like the clicking of beer glasses. It smells like campfires. You are your most outgoing and your most vulnerable, with true friends. We also found that Bumble BFF already had its own, unique color palette, a strong way to distinguish itself from its dating counterpart.

User Flow

Before we began ideating potential solutions, we mapped out the proposed user flow that we want our users to experience. We created this user flow to illustrate how users will move through the app and how they can use it to make friendships.

Iteration & Design

We decided to start ideating solutions by doing sketches as a team. We took what we felt were the best sketches related to solving our user's problem. These were the sketches that would eventually become our prototype.

Sketches

Mid-Fi & Usability

Usability Testing

After the usability testing on the medium-fidelity prototype was completed, we used the insights derived from testing to make informed decisions on how to improve those pain points.

The user profile page is now more personalized than it was before.

• The profile bubble icon provides more key profile highlights and the whole pane is clickable now.
• The event details page provides the users with clear information and control over managing events.
• Lastly, users can now manage which of their friends they want to share events with.

Final Prototype

Next Steps

• Conduct more usability testing on the current prototype to identify new pain points.
• Digging deeper into the event system and figuring out what users expect and/or need when booking, managing, and sharing events.
• Further, build out the friendship management system.
• Develop a 3-step onboarding process for new users.