Introducing… The Zoosk UX Team and Our Principles of Design

Zoosk’s UX team in all our glory (and featured left to right, top to bottom): User Research Intern Christine Petrozzo; Director of UX Beth Budwig; Senior UI Designer David Paslay; Interaction Designer Jared Crane; UI Designer Danielle Chandler; UI Designer Charmagne Kringstein; Content Strategist Megan Murray; and UI Designer Pou Dimitrijevich.
 
 
“The experience is beautiful when it’s accommodating and easy. That extra sense of delight isn’t something people are asking for, it’s something Zoosk is giving them.”

“I don’t care if we’re trendy. I care that we work.”

“Responsive design isn’t like a light switch. You don’t just turn it on”

“You’re at zero percent kittens. We want you at 80 percent kittens.”

“Don’t sass my macaw!”

There have been a lot of quoteworthy moments in Zoosk’s UX meetings over the past couple months. Admittedly, some have been more brilliant than others (I mean, everyone knows that most operating systems will crash well before reaching the 80 percent kittens threshold) but they’ve all made us realize that we have a lot we could be sharing.

Enter: The Zoosk UX Blog! (Tada!)

We’re a relatively new team but we’ve made huge strides towards improving Zoosk’s user experience in only a year. Between our four UI designers, an interaction designer, a content strategist, a UX director, and a user research intern we’ve managed to tackle some tough projects while putting a new emphasis on UX across the product development process.

In this blog you’ll find our thoughts on what it means to work in the ever-evolving world of UX, examples of the projects we’ve been working on, and some insight on what it’s like working on the UX team at a leading online dating site.

To start things off, and to introduce you to who we are as a design team, we wanted to share our four principles of design.

Good Zoosk design is…

Clear and familiar
When things are easy and intuitive, people are comfortable and free to enjoy themselves. Clear and consistent experiences help Zoosk’s members become experts at using our products so they develop positive associations with us and keep coming back.

Friendly and delightful
Zoosk is a friendly assistant that makes dating easy, not hard work. Small surprises, gifts, and playful experiences help our members enjoy themselves more. By deviating from the expected patterns used by other sites and apps, we create a sense of discovery and delight in our products.

Honest and trustworthy
People seek out trustworthy authorities to guide their actions. By creating experiences that reassure our members and instill confidence, we’re ensuring that they’ll stick with our products, follow our recommendations, and make purchases.

Motivating and Persuasive
Exclusive offers, rewards, and feedback are all ways we can motivate our members to develop positive behaviors. Building persuasive features into the interface that are easy, relevant, and trustworthy guides Zoosk’s members towards decisions that are consistent with our business goals.

If your team’s been thinking about developing your own principles, we recommend checking out Mental Notes. They were a huge inspiration behind our principles.