Dating : Would you use this platform?

Dating : Would you use this platform?

A while back I created a post that asked a very simple question: « What would be your ideal dating platform? » I got some responses on that and I have been working on something I think could be a good alternative to the more popular dating sites and apps. (This is taken from my own design document so prepare for a bit of a long read)

# Project background and goals
Searching for a significant other on platforms that match you with others based on an artificial profile score is very difficult. It subtracts any sort of authentic interaction between two people by replacing it with simple pictures and shallow descriptions.

The aim with this project is to create a dating platform that gives people a more authentic way of meeting someone, while giving more control over the kind of people that you meet.

# Core features
## Tag system
Since a core concept of this platform is giving the user the ability to find people who they would like, a system that is able to do that is very important. This system will consist out of two parts, interests and traits.

A trait is something that categorizes a user of the platform. For example, your list of traits could include: « Cook » or « Parent ». Traits aren’t meant to ‘brand’ someone, their only use is to make the account filterable. They can be acquired from filling out your profile information.

An interest is basically the same thing as what it means outside of a technical context, it’s something that a person is interested in. A user is able to search for people with other interests by filling them out in a filter.

## Meeting individuals
The first part of dating is meeting an interesting person. Since this platform won’t include a way of talking face-to-face with someone, there must be a way for two people to meet each other.

Instead of scrolling/swiping through a list of profiles, this platform will take inspiration from Omegle. On Omegle, you can start a conversation with a random stranger. This could be used to give people a chance for an authentic experience with each other.

The feature is quite simple. A person can connect to a 2 person chat-room with someone that matches their pre-defined set of tags and interests, both people can see this info at the start of the conversation. This will give both people an opportunity to kick off the conversation with something that they are both interested in.

When someone has a general idea of how the other person is, then they can choose to match, or to go to the next person. If the match option has been chosen, the other person can also choose to match or to go to the next person. If both people choose match, then the chat will stop and everyone gets redirected to a direct-message chat room between the two of them. If someone chooses to go chat with a different person, a reason has to be given. There is also a choice to not give a reason. After they go through with it, the conversation ends and a reason is given.

## Match making based on profile popularity
In the current online dating experience, being good looking helps extremely well. While being good looking is not a bad thing, it creates a situation in which average looking people get casted asside by the match-making algorithm. Instead of showing profiles of high interest to people, what if mid to lower interest profiles get shown to people?

This can be a simple option within the filter/meeting settings. It would ask you if you want to see profiles of the following popularity levels: low, average and high. This simple setting could create a more even playing field for average looking individuals since their profiles will be brought up more in the search results. It also will impact the way the [meeting individuals](#meeting-individuals) functionality works since profile with lower popularity scores will be chosen.

But how does this platform decide which profiles are popular? It uses the amount of unique views and match requests to determine if someone is getting a lot of attention.

## Interest blogs
While dating, it sometimes would be nice to read about the interests of the person you’re interested in. This platform will enable users to write lengthy blogs about things that interest them. This can be useful for when you want to convey your interests in a more elaborate way.

Blogs can be created on the profile page. When creating a new blog, A title, interest and NSFW warning must be given. When the blog has been written, it can be published.