How to make a girl an offer using social engineering

Original author: Or Ron
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Many people still believe that if you are a developer, you spend lonely and dull evenings at work, with the next project, and not with the beauty in the movie. In fact, work in the IT sector is not a hindrance to personal life, but quite the opposite. On the eve of iOS Valentine's Day, developer Or Ron described how he conquered the heart of his bride with UX.


“The beginning of this story was laid by my indefatigable passion for side projects and challenging tasks. As a software developer, I am constantly looking for cool projects that I could take to work. When I decided to make an offer to my girlfriend, I immediately realized: you need to use this passion to come up with the perfect personalized scenario.

I began a brainstorming session, identifying for myself three main goals:

  1. An experience that would be fun, exciting and tailored to it;
  2. Surprise and secrecy. I really wanted to at some point she was: “crap!” and I began to realize that I had left her prompts all week.
  3. Something unusual that she had never seen before.

By trial and error,

my first spontaneous thought was to make a game - it’s fun to develop games, and playing them, of course, is also fun. But the more I thought about it, the more I got into the idea, the clearer it became: it would have been a pleasure to me to have a good game made for me personally, but my girlfriend is not interested in them at all. If I had developed a game for her, she would most likely have postponed the phone without even finishing it completely. It was necessary to come up with a new concept corresponding to herself, her preferences.

Something universal! Yes, it’s universal. I began to ponder the concept of an application that combines everything that she likes. General idea? An application that every day invites the user to perform an action, and then makes it possible to upload a photo on which he is captured during the task. Simple and unpretentious. There was only one thing left - to make a list of what she most likes to do.

Personalization

Someone might argue that after eight years of living together there should not be a problem with this, and I myself can confirm that up to 75% of the items from the final list would have been thought out by one, but asking is always the most reliable. If she had a hand in creating the list, then I can be sure that she will like it.

Therefore, three weeks before the appointed date, I began to tell her about my new project called The ODI Challenge. She thought it was an abbreviation for the Or’s Daily Instagram Challenge, but the insiders (that is, I) knew that this is actually I DO (agree) backwards. The application daily gives the user one task - something nice to disrupt the usual daily routine. What is funny, she liked the idea itself, but the name is not a bit. We decided that the name would be temporary, and then the first thing we did was a joint brainstorming session to determine the draft design of the application and, of course, the list of tasks.

It didn't take us long to make a list of what she truly loves:

  • Call three people and just say that you love them;
  • Eat a piece of chocolate in the company of a loved one;
  • 15 minutes to read something interesting;
  • Take a walk;
  • Buy something you really want;
  • Listen to 3 favorite songs;
  • Meet with a friend or loved one;
  • Hug the one you love;
  • Impromptu have a picnic.

The first design option



This was a rough draft of the design (picture above). I knew that nothing more complicated would be required, but the interface was supposed to leave a feeling of a full-fledged application. To convince my girl that it is real, it was necessary to decorate it.

Having sketched the first option, I sent it to my friend and wonderful designer Eyal Kimhi asking for help. He immediately suggested exactly what was needed:





Jedi Mind Games

I built a “ready-to-test” version of the application and wrote in the code that the picnic assignment should pop up on Saturday - the day for which I appointed the offer. Now the point was small - hook it on ODI.

For the first three days, every morning I invariably reminded her to check the ODI. Relying on my words, she believed that actions were chosen completely randomly. Little by little, she began to look forward to daily tasks. Indeed, we have selected all that she liked! By the fourth day, she finally got involved - she began to check ODI in the morning and plan how to complete the task during the day. Everything, it would seem, went as planned ...

The law of meanness

Six days after installing the application, she firmly sat down on him and was happy. She had a wonderful week doing her favorite things, and I was looking forward to a Saturday picnic and preparing for it.

Unfortunately, the law of meanness works like a clock. It was Saturday morning, and, barely opening my eyes, I saw rain pouring outside the window. My girlfriend went to the gym, and I sat at home and freaked out. How do we go on a picnic in such a slush? Maybe stealthily steal her phone and make a new version of the application where the picnic will be rescheduled? I decided to wait for her and act on the circumstances.

An hour later, she opened the door and announced: "Today we are going on a picnic!" I was a little dumbfounded, but decided to play along: I said that it’s wet on the street, so it’s better to give up on a task today and have a picnic some other day. She immediately replied: “This is the whole point of ODI! You need to take tasks seriously, disrupt the usual course of the day, just take and do. Let's go to!".

It struck me to what extent she got involved. My plan worked even better than I expected! I portrayed a little discontent so that she would not suspect anything, and finally yielded.

And here comes the happy ending. It's an engagement story.

The picnic was excellent. I dropped to one knee, asked the cherished question and put a ring on her finger. She was in complete shock. I began to explain to her what she had been doing all week and what this led to. It took her a couple of minutes to come to her senses and put everything in its place, but in the end she was delighted.

For a week she did what she loves the most, and the culmination was a marriage proposal.



By the way, she said yes.

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