I'm taking the role of UX Designer and Developer

There's no efficient way to find a skating partner

Current methods include promoting yourself on social media which only works if you have a large following, asking in Facebook groups, or relying on your coach to know someone.

The idea

Create an app for the sole purpose of matching skating partners where you don’t need a large following, or have to know someone personally.

I created a Figma prototype to gauge interest

I used UX Pilot to create wireframes and prototyped the app with videos in Figma. I posted it on my skating TikTok asking if my followers would find it useful or want to use it. I also shared it with my coach and the USFS organization. I received positive and negative feedback and some suggestions.

Negative Feedback

USFS told me they think the app would face problems gaining users because our sport is so niche. I reminded them that they are the official US organization for Figure skating who also has an international skater following, so if they promote the app on their social media then there will be no problem gaining users. They shared it with their marketing team and asked me to update them when I finish coding the app.

Suggestions

My TikTok followers suggested I make it a swipe/dating style app because of the “Matching” aspect which aligned with my early wireframes, but I decided against this because the quantity of videos needed in each profile would not work with a swipe style app.

For effeciiencey, I built the frontend with Bolt.new

Bolt.new was able to generate wireframes matching the UI of the one I created with UX Pilot, but it struggled with the backend, so I transferred the project to VS code.

Backend and VS Code

VS code lets me have version control history and it doesn't change things that I don't want it to change like Bolt.new does. This is more efficient for the final steps of the project.

Finish coding, test, and promote

Once I finish the backend, I'll deploy the app and test it with my TikTok followers as part of an unmoderated usability test. Then I'll iterate and share the finished app with USFS to promote it on their social media.