Case Study: How We Created A Social Online Dating App

Just when you think about modern dating; one thing that brings hearts in the eyes is surely the ‘online dating app’. The hookup culture has become infectious amongst millennials and turned them into date-hungry swipe freaks.

We can’t agree more online dating apps have drenched people despite the difficulties and the swelling pain points that come stapled with the app.

People are actively trying to find meaningful relationships, or just want to casually hookup. And while we can’t deny the dating apps provide them all. The whole selling point of the dating app is no wonder “Oh, you can so easily find a date”. But to its bad, with many invisible strings attached.

Our client-focused heavily on the negative surfaces of on-demand dating and thought to curb those sucking points.

Here we discuss with you a detailed story of how we developed an online dating app project- "Sociality".

Pain points (Just Finding Frustrations)

By this point of time, every dating app user knows people create fake profiles for all sorts of reasons and this creates a snag for genuine daters. There is a slew of other pain points as well that surely hit bad and makes the experience draining.

• 8/10 woman complaint that men post photos that makes them look taller, trimmer and that may obscure their hair that means they post better-looking photos than in the original.
• 7/10 woman complain men are dating multiple women at a time on the same app and lie about personal detail so they cannot trust male counterparts.
• 5/10 profiles are spam and men and women both are just likely to be catfished.
• Ghosting is just another issue.

Sociality proved “You can still make online dating work”!

After taking into account the checklist of the current dating app issues, our client was clear in his thoughts that this grim has to be capped with a solution.

To overcome it he wanted us to tick the following boxes with our solutions:

• Use of front-facing camera to create profile pictures, no more deceptive pics.
• If a person finds a match, he/she cannot be matched with more than one person at a time. Only one date at a time.
• Users can only send one message to a random stranger and wait for his/her reply to be able to send another.
• The technology strict checks does not allow to create more than one profile.
• To make it even safer, if someone visits the users’ profile the user will be notified instantly.
• And for safety reasons users have been given controls to keep their profile public/private.
• Moreover, the app should also allow people to follow activities like hiking, sports events, concert, etc.

Sociality App Features

Sign-in by Recovery Key

Easy onboarding with registered email id/phone no. and recovery key.

Sign Up

Our next motive was to set a red flag against fake profiles and bots. Rising cases of fake accounts on leading dating apps have prompted to find a solution that takes down this ballooning issue. To answer this, we mandatory for users to use only front facing cameras to upload their profile pictures.

In addition, sociality has not confined itself only for dating. People can also come here for a casual hangout, raising a party toast, or play sports.

Find People Around You

Isn’t it interesting to befriend people nearby you? Not only you can chill out with them virtually but also can party and do some chit chat by meeting in-person. The Geo-fencing functionality we have integrated into the app allows users to see the people who are present nearby.

As soon as you find your interest you can tap on the user and view his/her profile picture, current location, distance from your location, and pass/like/love the profile. Users can also send messages. And wait for the reply to send another message. And once the user exchanges the love/like/pass they can start video messaging. And if found inappropriate the user can be reported.

Flag Yourself

How to make yourself discoverable to other people? Of course some would love to be found and others may not. To enable this feature the app has two flags- Public Flag and Private Flag.

If the user chooses a Public Flag – he/she can take a picture or record a video at a certain place and people can see it and reach out, if they are physically close to them.

Message and Search

Back to the chit-chat and gossips. Users can send text messages as well as video messages to a user’s match, and if it’s not a match then *the app is sorry* user can only chat if the person replies.

The app messages feature allows users to see message status (delivered, seen) and see if the person is online or offline, edit message and view message sent time.Points and Loots

This feature allows users to earn points by sharing and referring the app to others via WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Mail, and SMS.

Invite People

As the app promised, it is not only meant for dating but also hangouts, happy hours, parties, and sports. We have enabled this feature by letting users ‘Invite’.

To invite people users can select the occasion (as shown in the screen), add some information about the excitement with photos, videos and text. And send invites to contacts, people around, and to the users who have liked their profile or vice versa.

Edit Profile

We know users are often fickle-minded and tend to change their frame of mind over discoverability, receiving love like- so we have given them control toggles to make it ON/OFF. Users can also set notification settings here, seek help and support, and feedback.

Notifications

Users will get notifications of received messages, likes, unlike, love, unlove, and comment and the user will also get notifications if someone visits the user’s profile.

Technologies We Used

Behind this beautiful app UI, our developers have engineered a strong back end built with top tools and technologies. Since the app was built on Android and iOS, two teams worked on it- web development and iOS & Android app development team.

Web Platform:

• Language: PHP
• Database: MySQL (relational)
• Framework: Laravel
• Front End Development: HTML and jquery
• Caching: ReDIS non-relational database for all data storage

Android Application Technology

• Programming languages: Java(version 8/9)
• Toolkit: Android Studio 3.4.0 & Android Developer Tools
• Architecture Pattern: MVVM
• Chatting & Video Messaging: Soket.io

iOS Application Technology

• Programming Language: Swift 4.0
• IDE: XCode 10.0

Related reading: How Much Does It Cost To Develop a Dating App?

Project Handover

After the successful development of Sociality, we handed over the project to our client. The development process took almost 3 months and our client was completely satisfied.

During the development, the project was divided into milestones, as soon as we reached the completion we shared the demo link of the project with our client to get the feedback.

Post project deployment, we’ve also provided bug fixing and maintenance support.

We have developed a plethora of online dating app development projects. If it sparks an interest to you drop us a line. We will show you a quick demo that best matches your app requirement.