Summary
AI Cupid is a dating app that features an AI assistant that takes user meta data to match users with potential partners.
We created this speculative design to reflect on current issues regarding dating and work - life balance and what role AI could play in addressing them.
Info
Role
UI Design, UX Research, AI research
Time
April 2023- May 2023
Skills
Figma, Adobe Express
Collaborators
Sadie Palmer
Brianna Brown
Sydney Lodge
Beverly Vaz
During this projects development generative AI chatbot applications like Replika were getting large amounts of public attention due to an increase in users admitting to having developed either deep friendships or in some cases romantic relationships with their avatars. Based off of this we decided to explore other possible ways gen AI could be used to offset loneliness and foster human connection by designing a mobile dating app: AI Cupid. Integration of current gen AI into mobile apps was still a relatively new feature when we started this project, but the team was excited to take on the challenge of designing for AI.
Overview
Questions
1. How could AI be used to foster human connection?
2. How can AI be used to enhance the matchmaking experience?
3. How can we design for AI?
Research
We started the project with the goal to redesign the modern dating app. Early research took place primarily on Figma where we created a board to gather sources for inspiration, current research, and brainstorm what we wanted the app to focus on from a functionality standpoint.
During the content analysis portion of research I focused on analyzing recent reports about how users were engaging with the popular generative AI chatbot, Replika, and what needs they were looking to fulfill from this interaction. Most users reported feeling lonely, isolated, or disengaged from people in their day to day lives so they turned to the service as a way to cope with these feelings.
Ideation
From our research we narrowed down four different problems our project could address. We voted to base the design on addressing user loneliness given its prevalence in the use of chatbots and the ongoing “Loneliness Epidemic.”
Since the goal was to create a simple prototype showing the apps key functionalities we kept the user flow and UI simple.
Designing AI Cupid
Our next challenge was designing a system that integrated generative AI capabilities while maintaining the focus on fostering human connection.
The best solution was to integrate established gen AI capabilities through the form of an “AI Assistant” users could chat with in the app. Users would be encouraged to chat about themselves and any concerns or problems they might have with their dating life.
Instead of the traditional match functionalities where users can like or swipe on potential romantic partners, the AI would use the data gathered from these chats to pair them with a small amount of matches at a time.
Two ideas that emerged for how the AI would conduct these matches included:
1. The AI uses this data to construct a “virtual” version of the user that interacts with other “virtual twins” to see how high compatibility is between them.
2. The AI uses this data to automatically match the user with a handful of people they feel are most compatible.
We decided to give users the option to upload their general information (age, gender, etc) to the app (“Upload your digital twin”) while putting emphasis on interactions with the AI assistant to get more precise matches.
Final Prototype
The final prototype uses AI functionality to gather data from users and make more accurate matches based on user compatibility. Users are able to continue to converse with the chatbot as well to get more accurate matches and to help users with any other needs.
Lessons Learned
Overall, my teammates and I learned a lot from working on this project and found the challenge of integrating AI functionality into our design to be an extremely rewarding learning process. The biggest obstacle we faced during the project was the time limit. Given the short amount of time we had there was a shared disappointment on not being able to develop other possible features of the app.
Considerations for future work on the application would involve fully designing the AI system, creating new user interaction pathways and figuring out safety parameters to mitigate over-reliance on AI for companionship.