This document outlines the entrepreneurial journey of seven undergraduate computer scientists focused on creating a dating app called 'Close.' The app aims to leverage social networks, particularly Facebook, to help users connect with friends of friends for more meaningful relationships. The authors emphasize the importance of user feedback and scientific research in developing their product to avoid past mistakes and ensure it meets market needs.

1. Close
Dolor Set Amet

2. Disclaimer

3. Disclaimer
This is a study of 7 young, undergraduate, computer scientists, passionate by the idea of develop something that
people would use and buy. All that's written here is an offspring of what we learned about our market. Re-
searches, scientific papers, surveys, some assumptions and a lot of user feedback. Think of this as a diary about
the first steps of our entrepreneurial journey.
ii

4. The Book

5. S ECTION 1 This book is about our journey learning the right way to build
software and more importantly: how to build a the right prod-
uct, aimed at the right people in the right time. As you'll see
through the book this doesn't mean that our product will be
the next big thing, or that we will have a million thousand us-
ers. It just means that this time we won't screw up as much as
we did before, and if we do screw up, we won't waste our (and
The Book others) time, and money building something people won't
use.
Why is this being written in a book anyway? Wouldn't a blog
better?Startup normally use blogs, but we wanted to try some-
thing different. A book forces us not only to just share the
whole process, but also to be more critical about it, we will
need to be more precise, secure and organized about what is
written.
Being computer science students we very often tend to begin
writing code as soon as possible so we can actually see the re-
sult of it. We’ve been taught to build software for N.A.S.A.
And this made things a little difficult a couple of times, be-
cause as we learned through failure, this isn’t the best way to
run a Startup. So we read, discussed, and agreed that we will
never again launch a rocket without knowing exactly why are
we welding each part and who is benefiting and paying for
that. From now on, we will commit to built products the right
way: as Eric Ries, the writer of “Lean Startup”, says: built
something customers want pay for, as quickly as possible.
4

6. Context

7. S ECTION 1 tify if a certain person is a friend of your friend) and the al-
ready available data about individuals throughout their com-
ments, likes and shares.
One of our biggest concerns is that not everybody wants their
dating activity publicized, so a more successful app would op-
erate beneath the public wall of Facebook, and at the same
Context time, we want our product go viral.
[TIME Healthland, 2011]
According to a Stanford University/City College of New York
study released in August, the Internet was the third most
popular place to meet a new love interest in 2009. About 22%
of all the 3,000-odd heterosexual couples in the longitudinal
How Couples Meet and Stay Together Survey who met in
2009, did so through the web. Only a slightly higher number
met in bars, and the highest proportion met through friends.
That’s where Facebook takes place. While it doesn’t have
an official dating app, it certainly have a number of ways to
meet people. Men often prefer to to do their date-fishing on
Facebook, because women are more open to approaches from
guys who are known or close to somebody they know. Also,
people are less likely to lie, or put up a horribly inaccurate pho-
tograph on their Facebook profiles, because their friends will
call them out. Facebook eliminates the "blind date" aspect in-
herent in most designated online dating services because of
the easiness to identify users connections (for example: iden-
6

8. Pitch

9. Pitch
Tired to search for interesting people in the crowd?Ever wanted to be introduced to that gorgeous
friend of one friend of yours?
Close can do that for you. Putting you in touch with your friends to look over their friends list and
find people that can be interesting to you.
Close - A clever way to make new friends
viii

10. C HAPTER 1
Hunting
Primary Data

11. S ECTION 1 Survey description:
We ran a series of five questions on Facebook. Each turn a dis-
tinct question was asked to a specific group. After five turns,
all groups had answered all the five questions.This was done
this way because of Facebook's limitation to only one question
Hunting Primary Data per poll. And since we wanted to be as close as we could to our
possible users we decided this was the best way to survey
then.
After the concept of the product became clear in our minds we
started a journey that lead us to understand that all of our as- The data were inconclusive to show any big difference be-
sumptions could not be considered true unless we had then tween the controlled groups. We think that it's needed much
tested before. We needed something to prove that we were in more data to accomplish any valid conclusion. The poll also
the right direction. At first we thought that this would be im- pointed to us that people use social networks to maintain a re-
possible considering we had no product at all to show. But we lationship that have started in any kind of social event. We ex-
then noticed that if we could do it, it would save a lot of time pected data showed that people could start a relationship
(and in a real world situation, money) in planning and devel- through the Internet especially on social networks. It's already
opment. proved that it happens quite well in the general Internet, be-
cause of successful dating sites like Match.com.
Our first attempt was to unleash a simple survey with a con-
trolled and mixed group of possible customers. Teenagers, By the end we had more questions than when we began the
adults and any kind of people that we thought would like to survey. Things like: why isn't there already a successful exam-
meet new people online (we began assuming that our target ple of dating service on Facebook? And even, why relation-
market was mass market). We asked a couple of questions, try- ships that starts through the Internet often involves people
ing to build a map of how people meet other people after the that have no friends in common, wouldn't it be more natural
Internet, and how they do now with Facebook. to happen between socially closer people? Had the friend Cu-
pid passed unnoticed through digital age?
10

12. C HAPTER 2
Ask a giant for
second data

13. S ECTION 1 From now on we will quote articles we found and com-
ment how the piece of information is important to us.
To begin, lets see why do we use social networks:
Ask a giant for second data "The bottom line is that this goes back to the fact that, like all
primates, we are an intensely social species, and having our
friends, cohorts, and acquaintances close is important to our
general success. In these senses “keeping the wheels oiled” is
In this chapter we are going to discuss some of the key critical, hence why we like gossip, and hence why biographies
decisions we made in order to develop CLOSE. To do this we and fiction so wildly outsell anything else in the books mar-
surfed the web looking for articles, mainly papers that would ket."
help us making decisions about how our product should be,
and how it should work. We had a mindset to find scientific
based information, to support most of our decisions. Some
Then we discovered that in the end it is just like any
would consider this a overhead of work, in our defense we
other thing in our capitalist society, it is all about capital, but
have experienced just the opposite. Since we had scientists
this time not "money capital", it's the social capital:
work in our side we could skip some of the "trying and miss-
ing" fases, and make a hit faster, because those people have al-
ready researched, and could quickly tell us what works, what
"In 1916, L.J. Hanifan (in context of rural schools) discussed
don't and what's better. Another very important point is that
the concept of Social Capital, defining it as, “..that in life
our team is all formed by technology people, none of us have
which tends to make these tangible substances count for most
any social sciences background, so since our product is com-
in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sym-
pletely based on how people interact among each other, it
pathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and fami-
makes a lot of sense to consult people that have studied, re-
lies who make up a social unit"
searched and actually know "how people interact among each
other".
12

14. "It turns out, though, very clearly, that our social networks are
no larger in virtual worlds than in reality. The people you have
Now knowing a little bit more about human relation-
on your network are the people you would typically keep into
ships, we are able to understand why social networks are grow-
contact with in reality, face to face."
ing so fast on the web. The answer is very simple: as we saw in
the articles, we are social animals, we already had our social
networks, the web just made it faster to grow, easier to inter-
This last quote intrigued us. We all had "friends" on Face-
act and harder to manage since now we have so many connec-
book that we new from somewhere, but that we actually had
tions, and information about this connections run so fast that
not talked to. But then we realized that this people are not ac-
it's becoming hard to keep the pace.
tually in our network, they are just another "hyperlink" in our
We learned that internet social networks are extensions pages, just like anything on the internet. As the article men-
of real life social networks, lets see how big this extension be- tioned, we realized that people that we kept in touch in Face-
came: book are exactly the people that we would "keep into contact
with in reality, face to face".
"According to Facebook’s own statistics (as at April 2009),
they have more than 200 million active users, more than 100 We then started to think how this information could help
million of which use the site daily, and together upload more us on helping others to make friends on the internet. We saw
than 850 million photos a month, over a billion pieces of con- this:
tent a month, and interact through over 25 million active
groups, and 2.5 million events."
"It seems, to me, that relationships are face to face things.
There is no point in having a virtual relationship if you are
With this, we can now start to see some important facts never going to see those individuals again as it crowds your
to support CLOSE. Who are the people that we have in our so- “mental boxes”"
cial networks:
and this:
13

15. rather than chatting on the phone (e.g. I’ll be back in Newcas-
tle, shall we go for a beer, etc). With females, it’s the conversa-
"You are surrounded by an endless series of expanded layers
tion which slows the rate of decay."
of social networks. Your inner core is 5, which extends to 50-
150, 500 and eventually out to around 1500. As you go out
through the networks, the number of people included in-
"There is something about the female psyche which is in-
creases, the average quality of these relationships declines."
tensely social, and the most trivial conversations become part
of the process of bonding. This perhaps is what causes the dif-
ference in message in sms, facebook, etc."
This quote was very important, it led us to think about
witch people we should present to our users so they could
make actual friends. The answer to that was clear: friends of
This helped us on considering how to make the design
friends are the ones that we have more chances of meeting
and forms of interactions more neutral, so both, men and
face to face. We noticed that after a on-line interaction it is
women could have a good CLOSE experience.
very easy for us to meet friends of friends, since they com-
monly will attend events that the "friend in common" will go Another thing we thought would help our product be a
an so do the user. Also, it's not weird to set a encounter with hit was the fact that Facebook profiles could be used as a trust-
the 3 involved people (the user, the friend, and the friend of worthy form of learning about people and the veracity of what
the friend). they are saying. This can be used to give users a safer experi-
ence and also help then choosing who are they going to begin
Lets now learn more about human interactions in social
a relationship with. Here is something to support this:
networks. How differently men and woman behave:
"respondents were asked to rate how accurately their profiles
"If you go away from home (to university, for example) your
portrayed them and whether that portrayal was positive, as
relationships with friends do decay in time. Phones have
judged on a 1 to 5 Likert scale, with 5 indicating high agree-
helped to slow that decay considerably, but there is a big differ-
ment. Respondents reported high confidence that their Face-
ence in how males and females service these relationships.
book portrayals described them accurately (mean=4.16)"
With males, its about “doing stuff” and making arrangements
14

16. C HAPTER 3
Putting that on
paper

17. S ECTION 1 And Jake says: - don’t do that to yourself Mike. You de-
serve more than that. What this girl have in common to you, a
hobby? This isn’t enough.
It’s more than that Mike says. She is friend’s of Monica,
my neighbor. I used this website to ask my friends what
friend’s of them would form a great couple with me. At first I
didn’t hope that it was going to work either, but my friends
knew me, they knew what I like and what I don’t. So who bet-
Putting that on paper ter than them to help me, to meet new people. And just like
that I found Brigitte. We have been in a couple dates and it’s
been awesome. You should try. What’s the name of the web-
site, Jake asks. CLOSE, Mike said.
Jake wasn’t really sure about it, but if it had worked to
Mike it should worth a shot. When Jake get’s home he entered
We gather all we have learned so far and brainstormed
CLOSE and ask privately his Facebook friends(Mike and Ana)
about. What users wanted, what we think they really needed.
what girl they know that should match with him.
But the brainstorming wasn't helping enough, after a couple
hours we have a trunk full of possibilities and tons of post it's.
So we decided to take a different approach, by creating
a flux from the first thing the user sees to the last one.
With a tablet in hand we began. We admit, at first it
was superficial and a little bit shinny, but when the process
had finished we’ve got something to develop.
The history begins with Jake, a 24 year old man who
wants to meet some girls, dance, chat and possibly start a rela-
tionship. Jake already tried the conventional method: go to
clubs, mainstream one’s, alternative one’s; shows; bars. And
this was his approach through the past 5 years.
Some day he decided to try internet services to do that.
Two more years passed, experiencing awkward dates and now
Jake is 26, tired of dates, guessing his never going to be in a
relationship.
Last friday at work, he found his friend Mike in a web- He didn’t knew at first, but Ana has a beautiful and
site that seemed like thousands one’s that he passed through cool friend named Molly that is the one for him.
over the years.
16

18. While he waits for Ana and Mike to respond CLOSE
show some recommendations to him.
He is a nice guy, I will help him. And she enters CLOSE.
He watch them for a while, hopping that his friends
doesn’t take much longer.
Ana, sees a message on her Facebook: She runs to her Facebook friends list, and pick 4 girls to
Jake.
17

19. Then she set some stars to show how funny, sexy and
trusty is each one of them, puts a personal comment, choose
some nice photos of them from their Facebook album and indi-
cate them to Jake.
One, named Molly actually get his attention. But an-
other one seems nice to. So what to do? He put them together,
in a challenge, to see witch one of them is the write one for
him.
Jake receive the list Ana sends and start to look one by
one.
18

20. Then he pokes Molly, message her, and add her as a friend. By
this far they had started a great friendship.
And four months later they became valentines. That’s the
happy story of Jake & Molly, but only because they are CLOSE
to Ana.
And quickly he decides: It’s Molly! It’s she the one I have to
meet.
19

21. This Jake & Molly story is our flux, it’s how our users intend
to use our product and that’s what we gonna keep in mind
when we built it.
This flux became our base to build the CLOSE prototype.
So, to the Wireframes!
20

22. C HAPTER 4
Building a
sketch to
interact

23. S ECTION 1
Building a sketch to interact
Wireframes are an important design tool used in Web
development. It is a visualization tool for presenting proposed
functions, structure and content of a Web page or Website. A
wireframe separates the graphic elements of a Web site from
the functional elements in such a way that Web teams can eas-
ily explain how users will interact with the Web site. In this
chapter we will explain the behavior of CLOSE application.
This is the diagram of the application, it has the func-
tion of demonstrating how the system will flow. When the user enter for the first time in the application
without having been referred by someone else, he will be di-
rected to this page. It is his first access, so he do not have rec-
ommendations yet. Because of this, we will refer to him a set
of friends and acquaintances, for him to choose from and re-
quest suggestions of suitable friends for the user interact to.
22

24. chose, did not yet made the recommendation, the system will
again show people with common interests.
If the user has enabled the option "Challenge!", this option
will be active at the bottom of the application.
After selecting people, the application, based on a rec-
ommendation system, indicates to the user, people that have
common interests based on their profile information.
If the user returns to the application and the people whom he
23

25. If the user come back to the application and the people whom This page is sent to selected people. Once notification is re-
he chose have already made recommendations, he will be di- ceived, they can select one of the two options. At the bottom
rected to this page, where people listed will be grouped to- we show how the dispute goes.
gether, showing the friends that were recommended.
24

26. This is the profile generated by the system, it groups simple
information such as name, age and city. Events that the user
will attend appear on this page as well. It's also possible to see
their facebook profile, add the person as a friend, send a inbox
message and make a Challenge. The other picture shows a
user requesting friendship.
25

27. This is the area where the option Challenge is prepared, the The user who requested a Challenge can see the battle status
user selects a set of people who will battle against the person in this page.
selected. After selecting the person, a notification is sent to
the user contact. They will be directed to page D.
26

28. C HAPTER 5
Something to
see

29. S ECTION 1
Colors
Since our target audience are young people and the
service we provide is anything but formal, we choose to
use a very colorful logo.
In the application itself we used an opaque tone of or-
Something to see ange for the main background. Orange represents en-
thusiasm, fascination, happiness, attraction, success,
encouragement, and stimulation, combining the energy
of the red and the happiness of yellow. It’s also highly
About the graphic elements accepted among young people. We choose opaque be-
cause non-opaque orange is too aggressive for the vi-
It's clear that todays websites are developed in a way sion, making it uncomfortable.
they look simple, clean and pleasant to the eyes, people
don't want to have those old desktop applications with
a thousand buttons and configuration options, the
want simple things that what they're meant to the
quickest way possible. With this in mind we took a
minimalist approach to our design. Our goal was to
make it easy for the users to interact with others and
spread the word to more people in order to make this
viral.
28

30. How the wireframes helped us on this stage
As is noticeable, designs shown in this chapter are very
similar to the wireframes shown in the last one. Our
technic was to test usability with wireframes and after
having good responses to it, built our designs. Wire-
frames are easier to create and change, giving us more
flexibility and agility to test different configurations,
and making small changes to it.
29

31. 30

32. 31

33. 32

34. 33

35. 34

36. Credits

37. Credits
©CIn - UFPE, User-Machine Interface 2012
Bruna Cruz
Filipe Ximenes
Felipe Farias
Hugo Bessa
Josiane Ferreira
Rafael Aguiar
Ronald Dener
xxxvi