Overview
My journey at Tap only lasted a few months as I helped the team design the initial user experience and interface.
Although Tap has since been released on the App Store, the product that was brought to market was quite different than the product I designed. I decided to include this project in my portfolio because the product as I originally designed it was beautiful and ought to be shared.
The vision behind Tap was to provide a safe space where users can engage with others around their sexuality without risking privacy and judgement. This was a modern dating app quite unlike most others on the market.
Despite maintaining a broad appeal by keeping the sexual nature of the app subtle in design, Tap was ultimately designed as a ‘hook up’ solution.
I started by studying current user behavior and learned the best alternative solutions currently on the market. Users went to several different platforms for different functions, often starting conversations on one platform and exchanging contact information to connect another, like Snapchat or Kik.
Borrowing many attributes of the best alternatives currently available, Tap brought together otherwise disintegrated technologies into a truly cohesive experience that provided unprecedented privacy and engagement.
Similar to the continuous scroll interface that revolutionized gay dating in Grindr, Tap’s discover tab would populate people nearby within filtered parameters to encourage new conversations.
Users scroll to browse people nearby, expand profiles to learn more and connect with a simple message. This isn’t totally dissimilar to Grindr except the size of the bubble would signify a greater likelihood of a match based on secret interests (we’ll get back to that later).
Tap's continuous feed of people nearby (right) compared with Grindr's feed (left). When potential users saw this design, they were both intrigued and delighted but it's differences.
But in studying user behavior, I learned many people are seeking specific experiences—not just people.
So we introduced a modern version of the classifieds, allowing people to create anonymous posts of things they were seeking with unparalleled convenience to reply.
Despite people still using Craigslist Personal's at this time, many were apprehensive about it's security and privacy. Tap's solution aimed to satisfy this with built-in messaging, disappearing photos and video chat.
Unlike Grindr, Tap would be available for everyone—any gender or sexuality. Creating an experience welcoming to all is quite challenging as sexuality varies greatly between genders and sexual orientations.
One of the key challenges with bringing females into a continuous feed of profiles like Grindr is the ease of initiation. On most heterosexual platforms like Tinder and Bumble, women play a pivotal role in enabling men to send them messages.
In Tap, we did not want to inhibit people from expressing themselves but we needed to provide privacy and safety for the recipient as well.
Delivery of new messages were controlled through a Tinder-like interface. Although users can message anyone, chats were only initiated when mutually accepted by both participants. Filters on incoming message requests helped sort through people fast to quickly find what you’re looking for without distractions.
By leveraging Tinder's familiar swipe interface, Tap provided a fast, simple way for users to skip unwanted messages. Filters made it even easier to find exactly what you were looking for.
Once a conversation was started on Tap, I wanted to provide a robust set of communication tools so users can engage in any way they’d like without leaving the platform. As desired by users but not offered in many dating apps, messages on Tap included text, photos, videos.
Photos and videos beautifully spanned edge to edge of the chat, as there is no secret to the value of imagery in sexuality. But to provide unparalleled privacy, we also offered disappearing photos and videos similar to Snapchat. Users were able to set a timer and their photo or video would disappear shortly after viewing.
Like Snapchat, we faced the reality that recipients could screenshot and save private photos without our control.
To inhibit this, Tap publicly reported screenshots on a user’s profile to hinder abuse. To help introduce people to this new concept gently, we offered forgiveness on a user’s first screenshot and explained our position.
As we wanted to provide a safe place for people to engage without inhibitions, Tap warned users after every screenshot. Repeated offenses could disable accounts.
With live in-app calling, users could instantly verify each other without sacrificing their privacy or security.
A major concern of our potential users is the threat of ‘catfishing.’ Catfishing is the practice of fraudulently pretending to be someone else. The concern here is legitimate and the practice is widespread. Although some platforms offer in-app reporting for this fraud, I was on a mission to eliminate it entirely.
There is only one way to prove someone’s authenticity without doubt: live video. Through in-app live video chat, users could instantly verify each other, mitigate risk of meeting a creep and even better predict chemistry without even leaving the app—let alone their home.
Thus far, I’ve described how I used many technologies already in use on today’s top dating and social platforms to deliver a unique end to end solution for meeting and connecting with new people online. However, as user behavior suggested people would engage with this product regularly when they are aroused, I wanted to provide a medium for continuous engagement even when the messages and people nearby dry up.
In studying anonymous chat rooms, I discovered a massive fascination with random, anonymous peer to peer messaging and video chats.
By integrating this within Tap, we randomly connected people within predefined parameters into anonymous chat sessions, providing the same robust communication toolset as before.
With a single tap, users would be instantly connected with the closest person nearby looking for the same thing right now.
Creating an environment of uninhibited sexual expression while protecting privacy is hard. Tap’s Secret Desires became central to this. Users had the opportunity to add a plethora of secret interests based on keywords.
Although these Secret Desires would never be revealed to anyone, profiles revealed the number of Secret Desires in common between any two users. In addition, users with greater commonality were prioritized in the nearby feed and the chat randomizer.
A key proprietary feature in Tap, Secret Desires was key to discreetly connecting people with similar private interests.
The last feat of modern dating is the phenomenon of ‘ghosting.’ Ghosting is when an individual merely disappears. They stop responding to messages, ignore calls or requests to connect or unequivocally block you. It’s a form of rejection that leaves the recipient unsure when to accept it.
I was on a mission to eliminate this. I wanted to provide a simple, non-offensive tool to politely reject an advance with minimal effort. I called it ‘Sorry, not a match.’
By leveraging Tinder's familiar swipe interface, Tap provided a fast, simple way for users to skip unwanted messages. Filters made it even easier to find exactly what you were looking for.
Reflections
Although the team brought a version of Tap to the market, it was quite different than the product I originally designed. In addition to a complete lack of marketing, the current Tap product seems to be of little or no current use. However, the Tap I designed continues to offer brilliant enhancements over current solutions on the market and I hope to see some of these experiences available in other apps as well.