FT.COM - Feb 12 - Michael Norton, a psychologist at Harvard Business School conducted a survey with two other behavioural scientists, Jeana Frost and Dan Ariely. It revealed that people were unhappy with their online dating experience in three ways:
- The "online" bit of the dating was not fun
- It took forever
- People tend to have high expectations before the dates and feel disenchanted afterwards
Jeana Frost had an alternative approach to online dating. She created a virtual image gallery in which people had a virtual date, represented by simple geometric avatars with speech bubbles. People enjoyed these virtual dates and, when they later met in person, the virtual date seems to have worked well as an icebreaker.
Virtual dating has not taken off commercially, says Norton, in part because companies have tried too hard to make it realistic.
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