SwoonMe
Built the design system and end-to-end experience for a voice-first dating app as the lead designer. Grew monthly active users from 100 to 7,000+.
What was SwoonMe?
SwoonMe was a Silicon Valley dating app startup, founded by an ex-Facebook product manager, built on the idea that people would choose personality over appearance if you gave them the right format. Instead of leading with photos, users recorded voice clips and played icebreaker games to get to know each other. Profile photos were revealed later, after a connection had already started forming.
It was experimental by nature. The concept challenged how every other dating app worked.
Team and how we worked
I joined as the sole designer when the team was three people: the two founders (CEO and CTO), and me. Over the next ten months the team grew to include a second engineer, a content creator, a growth lead, and a junior designer I mentored.
Being that early meant owning the entire design surface. I touched every section of the app: onboarding, discovery, sound bite scoring, profiles, settings, messaging, and profile photo verification. Several of those were new features that didn't exist before I started. I worked directly with the CTO and CEO on product direction.
We were building something no one had a playbook for, so the pace was fast and the iteration cycles were short.
Flows I shaped
01 / MATCHING AND PROFILES
Showing up with personality through your voice
Users could browse matches, set their dating preferences, and send voice memos to people they were interested in. Through user research, we found that sound bite quality varied widely: some recordings were too short, hard to hear, or didn't give the listener much to connect with. We built a scoring feature that evaluated recordings based on length and clarity, then gave users hints on how to improve.
02 / ICEBREAKER GAMES
Turning matches into real conversations
Most dating apps drop you into a blank message thread after matching. All the pressure falls on one person to say something. We designed an icebreaker game that matches could invite each other to play. It walked them through rounds of voice-answered questions, and after the final round, both users could choose whether to reveal their photos. I ran a survey to find the best first-date questions and used the results to build out the prompt set.
03 / ONBOARDING AND SAFETY
Fixing the drop-off problem
SwoonMe asked people to do something unfamiliar: lead with their voice and keep their photos hidden. Our funnel data showed users were dropping off during onboarding, and we could see exactly where they were losing confidence.
We redesigned the flow to walk users through what voice-first dating actually is and how to record a good voice clip. We also added a photo verification step after our research showed safety as a major concern across dating apps. Users took a selfie in a specific pose, and verification software confirmed it matched their profile photo. It helped us confirm we had real users and gave people more reason to trust the platform.
Micro-interactions and motion
Dating apps live in the details. I worked on interactions that made every tap and swipe feel responsive and alive. These are just a few.
- Match animation Celebratory burst
- Card swipe Smooth, organic card movement
- Like button Heart burst with falling hearts
- Photo reveal Animated unlock sequence
Breadth of work
Other projects I took on
Ran in-app surveys to shape features like sound bite scoring, external surveys to source icebreaker questions, funnel analysis to identify onboarding drop-off points, and competitive research into safety concerns across dating apps.
Designed email campaigns for feature announcements and created product demo videos.
When a junior designer joined the team, I mentored him through his first product design role. It was my first time mentoring, and it taught me how much I value working alongside other designers.
What changed
One hard number, and a few qualitative wins from the work we shipped
Grew from 100 to 7,000+ over ten months
After the redesigned flow
With the scoring nudge
Through photo verification
What I learned
This was my first design role, and it shaped how I think about design in ways that are still with me.
SwoonMe was built on the idea that people want to date based on personality. When you asked them, they agreed. But behavior inside the app didn't always match. People still gravitated toward visual cues, and engagement with voice clips varied. Coming from psychology, this wasn't surprising, but experiencing it firsthand as a designer made the gap between what people say and what people do that much more obvious.
"Pay attention to what users do, not what they say." — Jakob Nielsen
Building visual polish while moving at startup speed, as a first-time designer, was a constant tension. I learned to make peace with "good enough for now" while keeping a list of what I'd refine later. The design system I built worked, but if I built one today it would be more refined.
Working directly with a founder gave me real ownership over product direction. When a junior designer joined, I realized how energizing it is to think through problems with another designer in the room. I do my best work when I'm close to decision-makers and have peers to learn from.
Toward the end of my time at SwoonMe, the company pivoted to a metaverse concept and rebranded to "VVibe." Months of work on the dating product became less relevant almost overnight. It taught me something useful about startups: the work matters, and so does the ability to let it go when the product evolves past what you built.