Product Name: Amor
Topic/problem description:
Throughout history, the concept of ‘dating’ has changed significantly and held different meanings in various cultures worldwide. From first dates that lead to marriage, family arranged weddings for money, power, or unity, to people swiping on a glass screen for a hookup (Thottam, 2016). In the past three decades, however, we’ve seen a controversial shift in how people date with the advancement of technology. “When the newspaper was invented, people bought personal ads to discreetly connect and communicate with one another in hopes of finding love or sex” (Thottam, 2016). Then with the hyper connection of the internet, digital personal ads became a new dating approach and bore the online dating service.
In 2000, Dr. Neil Clark Warren launched the online dating company eHarmony to help singles find significant others online for a long-term relationship by having users fill out a questionnaire. Then in 2004 the social network globally known as Facebook was invented by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard for students, which grew to heavily contribute to how we connect with other people online and how our love life carries over to our digital presence. With the further invention of smartphones and location-based dating services, the online dating industry exploded to become an undeniably useful way of finding possible ‘matches’ to date, hookup, or otherwise seek a long-term relationship with. However, a Pew Research study conducted in 2019 in America found that 75% of daters said that they’ve found it difficult to find people to date in the past year. As well as that 67% of daters said that their dating lives weren’t going well at all (Brown). Knowing that we have the technology to enhance our dating lives and the quantity of people we can meet, How might we then improve the quality of dating and relationships?
Solution:
Meet Amor, a dating focused self-improvement service that utilizes psychological research and cognitive behavior therapy concepts to help people enhance the quality of their relationships. Amor is based on the theory that the only true way people can get better at dating and enhance their relationships is through genuine self-improvement. As the saying goes, “the only constant in all of your relationships is you.” The service leverages evidence-based research to teach users how to develop healthy attractive qualities like vulnerability, healthy personal values, empathy, and honesty. The development of these qualities take time and knowledge, but can drastically strengthen the connection of one’s relationships. To develop these qualities, users can access recommended courses based on their goals and current weaker areas, content on other areas they might be interested in, and cognitive behavior therapy based activities to help them practice the skills they learned.
References
Brown, A. (2020, October 2). Americans’ Views on Dating and Relationships. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/nearly-half-of-u-s-adults-say-dating-has-gotten-harder-for-most-people-in-the-last-10-years/.
Thottam, I. (2016). The history of Online Dating . Retrieved from eharmony: https://www.eharmony.com/history-of-online-dating/