Chuttle – A Spontaneous Social & Dating Experience

Stage 1. Usability Audit

As a Senior UX/UI Designer at Chuttle, one of my key responsibilities was conducting a comprehensive usability audit to identify pain points, improve user engagement, and ensure a seamless experience. Given the app’s unique approach—randomly sharing content between users to spark connections—it was crucial to refine interactions, accessibility, and overall user satisfaction.


Key Findings & Challenges:

1. Unclear User Expectations – Some users found the random content-sharing mechanism confusing, leading to hesitation in engaging with the platform.

2. Onboarding Drop-off – The onboarding process lacked clarity in explaining how matches and content distribution worked, resulting in user churn.

3. Privacy Concerns – Users were uncertain about where their shared content was going, raising concerns about safety and control.

4. Engagement & Retention – While initial interactions were fun, maintaining long-term engagement required a stronger feedback loop and incentives.

Proposed Solutions:

• Redesigned onboarding with interactive tutorials - explaining the app’s mechanics step by step.

• A/B testing of onboarding variations to identify the most effective approach.

• Enhanced Privacy Controls – Implemented visibility settings, allowing users to control who receives their content.

• Report & block features made more accessible to ensure a safer environment.

• Gamification & Feedback Loops – Integrated engagement features like reactions, content insights, and prompts to encourage meaningful interactions.

• Personalised recommendations based on user behaviour to match them with relevant content and people.

• Streamlined UI for Discovery – Refined navigation and content flow to make discovering new people feel intuitive and exciting.

• Icebreaker challenges & prompts encouraging users to share content with a purpose.

Stage 2. Design Strategy

Designing Chuttle required a user-centric, engagement-driven, and trust-focused approach. Since the app’s concept revolved around spontaneous content sharing for social and dating interactions, the design strategy had to balance serendipity, usability, and safety while ensuring users felt in control of their experience.

User Research & Insights

• Conducted user interviews and surveys to understand how people feel about randomness in social/dating apps.

• Analysed competitor platforms such as Tinder, Bumble, TikTok to identify what works in content-driven engagement.

• Created detailed user personas such as casual explorers, serious daters, content creators.

Iterative Prototyping & Testing

• Developed low-fidelity wireframes to validate navigation and core interactions before full UI design.

• Conducted A/B tests on key features such as onboarding, engagement prompts, privacy settings to optimise retention.

Content-First UI

• Designed a feed-centric experience with full-screen content (photo/video) to immerse users.

• Implemented gesture-based navigation (swiping, tapping) for a more fluid experience.

Dynamic Matching Algorithm

• Designed a preference-based randomisation system, ensuring users receive content aligned with their interests.

• Implemented learning-based recommendations, so the app improves over time based on user interactions.


Privacy-First UX

• Designed granular content visibility settings (public, mutuals only, private) for flexible sharing.

• Implemented real-time consent popups before content was sent to new users.


Visual Identity & UI Style Guide

• Chose a bold, vibrant colour palette to evoke excitement and spontaneity.

• Used rounded, friendly UI elements to create a welcoming, non-intimidating feel.

Stage 3. Prototype Development

• Wire-framing: The prototype development process began with wire-framing, where I focused on establishing a clear information hierarchy and interaction flow. Given Chuttle’s unique approach to social discovery, it was essential to design a layout that encouraged spontaneous interactions while remaining intuitive. Using Figma, I created low-fidelity wireframes to map out key user journeys, such as onboarding, content sharing, and user matching. Early usability tests with these wireframes helped identify pain points, such as confusion around content distribution and navigation complexity, allowing for iterative refinements before moving to the next stage.
  
  

• High-Fidelity Prototyping: With a solid foundation in place, I transitioned to high-fidelity prototyping, bringing Chuttle’s experience to life with refined visuals and micro-interactions. The goal was to simulate real user interactions, ensuring that gestures like swiping, tapping, and reacting felt natural. Interactive prototypes were tested with users to validate features such as content visibility settings, engagement prompts, and the dynamic matching system. Feedback from these sessions led to several design refinements, including improved onboarding animations and clearer affordances for key actions, ensuring that users intuitively understood how to interact with the app.
  
  

• User Interface Design: The final step was crafting a polished user interface that balanced playfulness with trustworthiness. The UI design leveraged a bold, vibrant color palette to evoke excitement, while soft gradients and rounded elements created a welcoming atmosphere. A key focus was on visual hierarchy, ensuring that user-generated content remained the focal point while supporting elements like buttons and navigation felt unobtrusive. Microinteractions, such as haptic feedback and smooth transitions, added to the app’s responsiveness, making interactions feel fluid and engaging. By the end of this phase, Chuttle had a fully interactive prototype that not only looked visually compelling but also delivered a seamless and enjoyable user experience.