Waddle
A dating app that trades hours of swiping for live, virtual speed dating, so people actually talk instead of judging photos.
Context
Most dating apps are built to keep you swiping, not to help you meet anyone. You spend hours judging photos, matches pile up, and very little of it turns into a real conversation. Waddle starts from the opposite goal: get two people actually talking, face to face, as fast as possible.
The answer is virtual speed dating. Instead of endless scrolling, Waddle sets up short, live video conversations, matched by schedule and by location, so you meet real people in real time without the marathon of swiping first. The face-to-face part is the whole point, just done over video rather than in a bar.
The penguin is doing more work than it looks. Penguins waddle, which is where the friendly, low-stakes tone comes from, but they also mate for life, which is the real message: the product is about lasting connection, not the next quick match, and the mascot carries that without the app having to spell it out.
My role
This was a team project, and I led the design. The concept, the name, the design language, the logo, the core speed-dating feature, and most of the UX and UI came from me. My teammates contributed to parts of the UX and UI along the way.
Designed against the swipe.The idea the whole app is built on
The concept
This started as a question, not a screen, so I spent the time up front on the flows: how someone moves from signing up, to being matched, to landing in a real conversation. The app carries that idea through two separate modes.
Speed dating is the core: a live, timed video date with a shared topic and a countdown, so two people actually talk instead of scrolling. VibeMatch is its own mode, and it pushes the idea further, three minutes with no visuals at all, matched on the conversation rather than a photo.
The screens
From the flows I designed the mobile screens in a soft purple system that keeps the tone friendly and low-stakes, which matters a lot when you are about to go live on video with a stranger.
Key decisions
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01
Designed against the swipe.
Every core decision points people toward a real conversation instead of another scrolling session, which meant deliberately leaving out the addictive patterns other apps lean on. Swiping is built to maximize time on the app, not connection, and I wanted the opposite.
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02
Kept the tone warm on purpose.
A live video with a stranger is genuinely nerve-racking, so the color, the copy, and the mascot all work to lower the stakes rather than hype them up. If the product feels calm and kind, people are far more likely to show up and be themselves.
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03
Led with the flows, not the visuals.
The concept lives or dies on whether the scheduling-and-conversation loop makes sense, so I treated the flows as the main design work and let the screens follow. A beautiful screen cannot save a broken idea, so I proved the loop first.
Result
It stands as a dating app with a clear point of view, backed by real flows rather than just nice screens. Leading the design on a team taught me as much about aligning people as about the product itself.
What I’d do next: prototype the live conversation flow and test it with real users, pressure-test the safety and no-show cases, and check whether people would genuinely book and show up.
Explore the file
The real Waddle file, live. Pan and zoom the whole design, or flip to the clickable prototype.
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