A table of six is a different product from a table of two. One flat night, and a first-timer doesn't come back.

What makes a group date good enough that a first-timer comes back?

I joined group dates as a paying customer, then talked to people after.

A good night starts with who you were matched with. But whether everyone found a way in is what decides it.

Tinder and Bumble stop at the match. Timeleft chose restaurants. Thursday and 222 chose activities.

Breeze puts romance in a bar, a room built for conversation. So the fix had to deepen the conversation, not replace it.

Three new steps inside a flow Breeze already runs.

Before · Leave a Question for the Table

Arrives with the booking confirmation.

At the Table · Open the Question Cards

Pinned above the group chat. Read aloud, at the table's own pace.

After · Feedback on the Cards

Three quick questions: did the cards work?

The real measure: do first-timers book again?

Tested on the table first-timers usually get: an uneven ratio, a late arrival.

The cards earn their place if uneven tables start to feel like balanced ones.

I thought I was solving an icebreaker problem. It was a trust problem: how much a stranger gives in the first few minutes.

What if Breeze designed not just the meeting, but the memory?

Pitched to the co-founder. Became a paid consultation. Now live, at a 45% play rate.

Dating apps make money when you keep swiping, and promise you'll stop. That contradiction sits between the business and the user need: a product problem, not just a feature.

How might we align business success with giving users more intentional ways to connect?

A team of four, from economics, psychology, law and design. We tested the idea before building it: a Typeform questionnaire, an Outlook inbox, and four weeks of a match round.

Desk Research shows that:

• Dating app burnout is a widespread and shared experience.
• It is largely driven by the challenge of forming meaningful connections online.
• Users are increasingly seeking deeper, face-to-face interactions to build trust and lasting relationships.

Across 30 interviews, we found that online matches rarely turn into actual dates, and the few that do rarely live up to the vibe online. Some said profiles simply are not credible. Others said the sheer volume of choices and messages makes trust harder to build.

Selene embodies the Gen-Z majority in our research. She relies on dating apps to meet people, yet experiences the same burnout and mistrust that 78% of surveyed users reported.

Through researching competitors in the dating sector, we began to see more clearly where our service fits. While many platforms lean toward either casual interactions or limited matching depth, we found ourselves positioned differently, prioritising both compatibility and intention.

So we positioned Same where high compatibility meets an actual date.

Three pain points from the research, each answered by one feature: choice overload met with a limited number of matches at a time, a low compatibility match met with a weighted matching algorithm, and the weak transition to a real date met with a date planner.

1. Student emailverified
2. Compatibility testone questionnaire
3. One matchcontact details and a date guide
4. Feedbackasked afterwards

180 people signed up in a month. We matched every one of them and sent each person their match's contact details. And that is the last thing we knew: the moment the handover happened, the product went dark. The follow up survey came back from too few people to trust.

So we ran seven dates end to end with people we recruited directly, and me among them.

It held in the middle and broke at both ends.

Feature iterations

• Profile with photo. Without one, less trust and fewer dates.
• 3 to 5 matches, not 1. One mismatch ended the whole cycle.
• In product date booking. Dates stalled without platform support.
• Keep the loop on platform. Feedback was lost once people went off it.

People reported that the score suggested they matched, but the actual date felt otherwise.

If the score can't promise chemistry, the product has to stop selling certainty and start improving the odds.

If the match score can't promise chemistry, hand people more dates.

Based on the insights gathered from the MVP, I designed SAME as a standalone app that integrates testing, matching and date planning in one experience.

Same charges for meetings, not membership. Free to join, free to be matched, no subscription at any point. Revenue appears only when two people actually go on a date. People come back for the smooth and genuine in person dating experience.

Targets set for the redesign, not measured results.

• 35% of matches becoming an actual meeting, against a 20% benchmark.
• Repeat cycles after a bad match.
• Post date feedback showing people met someone genuine, and came away less burnt out than on the apps they'd been using.

Validate the promise, not the product.

Typeform and Outlook tested the core idea in weeks. Building the app first would have spent months proving the same thing.

Some things resist design.

Chemistry defeated every scale we tried. The lesson wasn't to measure it better, it was to stop selling certainty and start engineering the conditions for people to meet.

I built the product and not the measurement.

The event that defined success happened off platform, where I couldn't see it, and I tried to recover it afterwards with a voluntary follow up, the one instrument guaranteed to hear only from the people it went well for, so Phase 2 puts the feedback step inside the product.

I started with a question: why does something meant to make meeting people easier so often feel exhausting?

The Pew research I reviewed showed mixed experiences. Some people find lasting relationships, but fewer than half believe dating apps have made dating easier. Around a fifth think they have made it harder.

Dating is difficult, and no app can guarantee chemistry. But after examining the features, business models, reward mechanisms, and sociological research, I began to wonder how much of that frustration comes from the products themselves.

Dating apps are free to join, then charge you to improve your chances.

Across Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, paid features offer similar advantages:

• See who already likes you.
• Get seen by more people.
• Send more likes without limits.

If you feel overlooked, you can buy visibility. If you feel uncertain, you can pay to see who is interested.

Subscriptions renew monthly. Revenue comes from continued use, while finding a relationship can mean leaving the product.

This does not mean companies deliberately keep people single. Successful relationships build trust and attract new users. But there is still a tension between helping someone finish their search and earning money while it continues.

Hinge’s slogan, “designed to be deleted,” captures that tension: its promised outcome takes users away from the business.

Most features serve two purposes: making you feel wanted and helping you get noticed.

Feeling wanted

Swiping offers a repeatable action with an unpredictable result. You might get a match immediately or after many attempts. That uncertainty gives you a reason to keep checking.

A match also provides reassurance: someone has noticed you. Lists of incoming likes make that attention visible and countable.

It becomes easy to return for the feeling of being wanted, even when you have little energy left to meet anyone.

Getting noticed

Boosts, Super Likes, Roses, and Spotlight let you buy visibility or signal stronger interest. Their value often depends on scarcity: a Rose stands out because most likes are ordinary.

Together, these features turn dating into a competition for attention. You are choosing people while trying to improve your chances of being chosen.

What struck me was how much happens before a conversation starts.

There are many tools for browsing and attracting interest, but less support for building a connection, arranging a date, or deciding whether to keep seeing someone.

Seeking reassurance

Wanting to feel wanted is normal. Dating apps make that reassurance available whenever you reach for your phone.

Over time, checking for matches can become a way to manage loneliness, boredom, or rejection. One woman in the research described returning for the notification sound rather than a relationship.

Research identifying entertainment and self-validation as reasons for using Tinder helps explain this. A match can feel like progress, even when it leads nowhere.

Struggling to choose

Barry Schwartz distinguishes between “maximisers,” who seek the best option, and “satisficers,” who choose something that meets their needs.

A constant stream of profiles can encourage maximising. You may enjoy talking to someone and still wonder whether a better match is waiting.

Standards matter. But comparison can eventually prevent the decision it was meant to help you make.

One user described feeling overwhelmed by unread messages and unexplored matches, worried that everyone else was making better use of the opportunities. Yet those frantic sessions had produced no dates. The possibilities had become another thing to manage.

Reaching exhaustion

People with many matches and people with few can become exhausted for different reasons.

For the first group, dating becomes admin: maintaining conversations, assessing compatibility, and deciding whom to meet. There may be little attention left for any one person.

For the second, a lack of response can feel like a judgment of personal worth. A paid Boost then offers something immediate to do about that feeling.

Both experiences can keep people checking, hoping the next session will be different.

Getting to know someone takes sustained attention: ordinary conversations, uncertainty, and time to discover what a profile cannot show.

Dating apps help us meet people, but their interfaces often redirect that attention towards comparison and self-assessment.

The imbalance is clear: the products offer extensive support for discovery and visibility, while users do most of the work of building a connection.

Digital matchmaking still has value. It introduces people who might never otherwise meet. But a different approach would measure success by whether those introductions lead to the relationships people want.

What would a dating product look like if helping people leave satisfied was central to how it worked?

My main responsibility was to redesign the overall web experience to make it feel frictionless, modern and professional. My design area included user interface, user flow, brand tone and content design.

As my client offers wealth management services, where accuracy is highly valued, it was essential to be risk aware when designing content: to avoid conveying a misleading message through words or images.

Before · After

I made a pitch deck for the first client call, in which I:

• Analysed the design issues of the website
• Compared them with competitor websites
• Proposed three solution plans

During the call:

• We discussed the brand tone
• I understood the visual preference of the client
• I sketched a user flow
• We went through the project timeline

Firstly, the original user flow, clicking left and right, is one of the main things that makes the website feel outdated. So I changed it to scrolling up and down, with their services information unfolding as the user browses, without friction.

Secondly, the information hierarchy needed to be rearranged, as it was nearly impossible for a user to read on either web or mobile. Therefore, I reordered it by varying fonts and images.

The original website is less memorable than its competitors, for lack of a brand tone. So I asked the client to think of two quotes that represent their philosophy, which became:

Together Wealthier. Wealth comes to those who move with purpose.

I then proposed three colour palettes for the new visual style, and we agreed on the combination of neon green, dark blue, white and black. We felt it gave a modern and vibrant feeling.

Images of scenery and people were a visual preference of the client, through which she wanted to express wealthiness, pleasure and collaboration, and to feature cross cultural and Asian client images. So I sourced mountains, trees, ocean and road to stand for accumulating wealth, and people with happy faces and shaking hands to stand for good collaboration.

Dünyada is a Turkish experimental theatre work coming to London in 2026, its first run in front of UK audiences. It had to raise money from people who had never seen it: backers, venue partners and Arts Council.

My role was to carry the show’s existing look into a campaign that could do that, across the poster, the official website and the Kickstarter page.

The original content of Dünyada (Turkey) on Instagram presents a retro yet minimal aesthetic. This look is created through images captured with an old film camera, which gives a distinct retro character, while the sans-serif typography adds a clean and modern feel.

The rest of the performance art or drama projects on Kickstarter is very important. After comparing top fundraising projects, I found that a common element is a strong storytelling image taken from the performance or story, then a title paired with attention-grabbing text that complements the image.

A neo grotesque poster language: high contrast black and white photography, tight uppercase lockups, and a small family of workhorse typefaces. Roboto Condensed, Poppins, Helvetica and Gill Sans, set large and flat against the image.

Campaign Poster

Four routes for the London run, each pairing the wordmark lockup with a different photographic crop, so the campaign can run across a Kickstarter header, an Instagram grid and print at the venue without losing the original's voice.

Website

The London site end to end, from the landing page through the show details, press response and team, to the sign-up in the footer.

Nochtane is a hardware startup building The Circle, a circadian lamp that follows the sun across a full day: a simulated sunrise to wake you, 10,000 lux therapy when the sky won't cooperate, warm low blue light as the evening comes in, all tracked through a companion app. The brand had already proven itself at home, generating RMB 2M in profit in China, and North America was next.

I led brand and go to market end to end: consumer and competitor research, positioning, launch strategy, and with the lead designer the identity system and the first two channels.

How does a new brand earn trust, before it has a single customer?

Product Audience

Urban adults 25 to 45 in North American cities and high latitude regions: office professionals, remote workers, parents at home. What they share is not a symptom but a broken light diet.

Pain Points and Gain Points

Competitors Analysis

All competitor products solve a moment. None solves a rhythm throughout the day.

Light isn't a bedtime product or a winter product. It's a rhythm.

Not an elite wellness persona talking down, but a sincere, warm voice that keeps you company in living well.

Brand personality

• Inspiring: sells a customized circadian rhythm for your health, instead of a named problem.
• Nerdy: explains the mechanism, buys credibility.
• Fun: refuses to be critical and never reads as clinical.

The route

1. Instagram Ads
2. Instagram Page
3. Shopify Store
4. Email signup
5. Preorder

Why this route

Instagram judges brands editorially. Cold traffic dies at a store, so the page earns trust.

It is also the cheapest route a new brand can run.

Instagram Page

• Inspire: shows a better morning in scenes, not specifications.
• Educate: the trust engine, the science of light.
• Entertain: kept small, reach at the cost of credibility.

Content phases

• Goal: phase one introduces the brand and builds trust.
• Pillars: light and health science, and the people behind the brand.
• KPI: reach and follower growth, explicitly not sales.

Account prototype

• The grid: opens with what the brand believes and who makes it.
• The highlights: answer a stranger's objections, what it is, how it works, who's behind it.

Product Launch Page

The launch page repeats the daily rhythm the positioning is built on: wake energized, stay focused, unwind.

The Circle is prelaunch, so there is no performance data yet. It is a measurement plan written before spend, so the positioning could be evaluated.

The funnel assumes paid ads are in the budget. If CPMs came in high, the whole route would need to add a slower organic and community led entry.