Stephanie Schapowal

Sweet Pea brand & dating app

A dating app that recruits your friends to play wingman

Sweet Pea brand & dating app

Background

Sweet Pea was looking to widen their dating pool

Sweet Pea is a conversation-first dating app; their team aspires to add depth and meaningful connection to online dating. They came to Big Human to dream up exciting new features, refresh their brand, and make some critical UX updates, all with the goal of growing their user base to make more connections possible.

Three screenshots of the original Sweet Pea app: a login screen with the Sweet Pea logo, an Account Setup form requesting name, email, age, and gender, and a "Select a Prompt" screen with conversation starter options.

The Sweet Pea app before our engagement had a dated brand, an onboarding flow that felt overwhelming, and some accessibility challenges.

My role

My role in the project was to refresh the brand, apply the new brand to updated UX flows designed by Jessie, and work with the entire team to brainstorm and develop new features.

Approach

A warm rebrand inspired by the idea of perfect pairs

After performing a full audit of competitors, we decided to position Sweet Pea as a more human and intellectual embodiment of dating—an opportunity for conversation rather than a rat race.

Their green brand color was already unique among the competition, but we softened it with a toned white throughout, and added a secondary palette of warm purples for contrast. We introduced a serif typeface to speak to the “NPR set,” Sweet Pea’s main user demographic. Leah created the illustrations, extending the concept of perfect pairs.

Before-and-after comparison of the Sweet Pea logo on a dark green background. The original uses a bold italic wordmark; the updated version has a lighter, non-italic wordmark and a refined pea pod icon.

A lighter, non-italicized weight, as well as lightening the line weight of the pea graphic, made the logo feel more premium and thoughtful.

Brand moodboard showing line illustrations of plants and intertwined figures, a dark green card reading

Our brand direction sought to bring warmth, play, and the idea of deeper engagement to the language of dating apps.

Two pages from the Sweet Pea App Style Guide in Figma: UI elements including buttons, form fields, and dropdowns on the left; a color system with labeled swatches organized by greens, purples, and neutrals on the right.

A few sections from the Figma style guide I created to translate the brand into UI elements

Profiles and messaging that makes matching fun, not just a checklist

The core of the experience is swiping through profiles. To accomplish our goal of encouraging more conversations, we put more visual emphasis on the icebreaker, made photos larger and easier to view, and introduced more opportunities start a chat. We also gave users more opportunities to customize their profiles by connecting their Spotify and Goodreads accounts, and adding colors and stickers.

Three screens of the redesigned Sweet Pea user profile, showing a photo, icebreaker prompt, fun facts, Q&A sections, and detailed attributes like lifestyle preferences and deal-breakers.

Profiles offered a lot of easy ways for users to put their personality on display, and for potential matches to strike up a conversation.

Three screens showing Sweet Pea's inbox and messaging flows: a conversations list, a chat with a featured icebreaker prompt at the top, and a message thread where users share their prompt responses.

We centered the icebreaker at the top of the chat to offer a built-in conversation prompt.

Three screens showing profile customization: a full profile view with Spotify integration, a Customize screen for editing photos and icebreaker text, and a Stickers panel for adding decorative elements.

Color, stickers, and integrations add another way for users to share their personality.

Inspiring users to recruit their friends as a Wingmate

The Wingmate feature was born out of the idea that your friends might tell your story better than you would. Users can send invitations to their friends to record videos about them based on a prompt. Users can then share that video on their own profile to better attract matches.

Wingmates are encouraged to download Sweet Pea too (there’s a web version for those uninclined), so they can manage their videos. That way, a Wingmate request is also an invitation to join Sweet Pea, building an audience that extends beyond just single people.

Three screens of the Wingmate feature: a welcome screen inviting the user to record an endorsement video for a friend, a Wingmate Prompts screen with questions about the friend's personality, and a video recording screen showing the selected prompt.

Not only was Wingmate a fun way to connect, it acted as a referral mechanism for users to recruit their friends.

Team

Jessie Sattler (UX designer), Ali Eisner (Product manager), Kris Kiger (Design director), Leah Schmidt (Illustrator), development by Sweet Pea

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