Product Validate
A community-first dating platform designed to slow down online matchmaking. By combining a 30-day onboarding journey, profile verification, and AI-powered compatibility insights, Validate helps people get to know one another before dating begins.
Details
Founding Product Designer
Team: CEO, Front-end Dev
Scope: 0 to 1 Product Strategy, UX/UI, Design System
Problem
Modern dating apps optimize for speed. Users can create a profile and begin swiping within minutes, resulting in an ecosystem filled with fake accounts, low-effort interactions, and people with little intention of forming lasting relationships.
Solution Community Before Romance
I designed a dating platform where members spend their first 30 days participating in the community before unlocking dating features. Through profile verification, shared activities, and guided interactions, Validate creates context between members before introducing potential matches.
Result A More Invested User Base
By raising the barrier to entry, the platform filters out casual swipers while encouraging genuine participation. The result is a community where members have greater confidence in the people they meet and stronger foundations for building relationships.
CONTEXT
Validate is a dating platform focused on restoring trust to online matchmaking.
And how does it do that?
Instead of immediately placing users into a swipe-driven dating environment, Validate introduces a community-first experience where members build credibility and relationships before accessing dating features.
Through a 30-day onboarding journey, profile verification, community participation, and AI-assisted matchmaking, the platform aims to create a higher-quality ecosystem where users feel confident that the people they meet are genuine.
PROBLEM
Online dating has become increasingly transactional.
Users navigate an ecosystem filled with fake profiles, bots, scams, and endless swiping. Conversations often lack context, recommendations feel arbitrary, and meaningful connections are buried beneath low-quality interactions.
People weren't struggling to find matches.
They were struggling to trust them.
GOALS + NORTH STAR
To design a community-first dating platform that prioritizes participation before matchmaking.
Build Trust: Create a 30-day onboarding journey and verification system that establishes credibility before members gain access to dating features.
Improve Interactions: Encourage authentic self-expression through guided profiles, shared interests, and AI-assisted conversations.
Foster Community: Create opportunities for members to engage beyond dating through participation, events, and interest-based experiences.
Scale Growth: Establish a foundational design system to efficiently support future matchmaking, community, and social features.
PROCESS + KEY INSIGHTS
I conducted stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, user journey mapping, and workflow explorations to better understand why existing dating platforms struggle to create meaningful connections.
Key Insight 1: Instant Gratification Loop
Most dating platforms optimize for immediate engagement, allowing users to begin swiping within minutes. This low barrier to entry encourages casual participation and creates an environment where commitment and accountability are often lacking.
Key Insight 2: Context Deficit
Profiles are frequently reduced to photos and short bios, making it difficult for users to understand who someone is beyond surface-level information. As a result, interactions often begin without meaningful context.
Key Insight 3: Conversation Bottleneck
Many promising matches fail to progress beyond the first interaction. The pressure of crafting an opening message creates friction that prevents users from building momentum toward genuine engagement.
Key Insight 4: Community Vacuum
Most dating experiences operate as isolated one-to-one interactions. Without a broader community layer, users have few opportunities to build familiarity, establish credibility, or connect through shared interests before pursuing romantic relationships.
SOLUTION
Validate, a trust-centered matchmaking platform designed around community participation, authentic self-expression, and transparent matchmaking.
DESIGN 1/3
The guided profile builder
encouraging deeper self-expression
This feature guides members through thoughtful prompts designed to surface personality, values, and interests beyond photos alone. By transforming profile creation into a conversation experience, it directly supports the insight that meaningful connection begin with understanding who someone is, not just how they look. The result is richer profiles that give members more context before deciding to engage.
DESIGN 2/3
AI-powered conversation starters
reducing the friction of the first message
This feature generates personalized conversation prompts based on profile responses, shared interests, and community activity. By reducing the pressure of sending the first message, it directly supports the insight that many promising connections fail before a conversation even begins. The result is more natural interactions that help members move beyond surface-level introductions.
DESIGN 3/3
Community-driven trust systems
building trust through contribution
This feature introduces a community-first onboarding experience where members engage with others before accessing dating features. Through participation opportunities, community initiatives, and contribution-based interactions, users establish credibility while becoming invested in the culture of the platform. By creating context before romance, it directly supports the insight that trust is built through shared experiences rather than profile verification alone.
WHAT I WOULD DO NEXT…
Introduce a hybrid matchmaking system with human professionals
Matchmaking is one of the fastest growing areas where AI is being used extensively to improve compatibility. Leveraging it, I'd focus on introducing a hybrid matchmaking system primarily focused on combining AI-powered recommendations with human expertise to deliver a concierge-style dating experience.
(coming soon)
Experiment a little with the homepage design
Here is a conceptual user interface that I designed as an answer to the question: what would a trustworthy homepage look like?
(coming soon)
