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Spring Street Networks hosts a number of dating services, including Nerve, boston.com personals, love.com (AOL's dating service), and Esquire. This web-based application has some challenging design issues: change must be gradual, so as not to alienate members, and all design must work within a variety of outward appearances, or "skins".
Our first job was to convert the chat system from a difficult-to-use Flash-based chat to an HTML-based system. The original design (below, left) was marked by long download time, tedious animations, unusual and confusing user interface, and performance problems. The new design (below, right) leveraged other familiar chat system interface design, and kept its focus on the chat itself. Click on these images to enlarge them.
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Our next task was to improve the photo upload interface. Users were allowed to upload up to 6 photographs, then assign them to one or more different profiles. The original interface (below, left) required many screens and would confuse the number of photos uploaded with the profiles where they were used. As a result, users weren't fully utilizing this feature. The new interface (below, right) had two distinct areas: the uploaded photos, and the photos assigned to the user's profiles. the design was much cleaner and easier to use.
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We also worked on the quality of the search results for finding other users. The original search results (below, left) were difficult to read, had empty spots, and commands like "Send a Note" and "Send a Wink" were treated very differently. The new design (below, right) was more consistent in it's treatment of commands, and also showed much more information in the same height space.
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We also worked to improve profile management. The original profile view (below, left) was one long page with many sections. The page design was disorganized and inconsistent. Worse - users would spend so long editing it that their login would time out, and their changes would ultimately be lost. The new design (below, right) broke up the home page into multiple pages, each of which can be edited quickly and saved. It also combined both "about me" and "i'm looking for" into one view, so that they user could see this related information side-by-side.
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Finally, we were asked to think about a new design for the home page and new directions for key product features. The existing home page worked in a variety of templates (skins), but lacked many of the features of its competition. It's layout was also obviously squared off. These are the original designs, before we worked on them (shown in small size only):
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We developed a number of concepts, which are shown (in small size only) below.
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All Rights Reserved.
Telephone: 978.352.2585 and ask for Hagan Rivers
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