This App Is Bringing Humanity Back To Online Dating

The name of the up-and-coming dating app, After, says it all: What happens after you make a match? What do you do after you send those first few nervous texts? And how can you recover after heartbreak?

The “after” of any situation is usually neglected in favor of the thrill of what came before. “Before” is for taking risks; “After” is where pesky consequences occur… especially in the dating world. 

The app After wants to make everyone’s “afters” more comfortable, more fun, and more productive. After’s founder, Katie Dissanayake, told us how her goal with After is to help people hone their dating skills along with their confidence levels. 

“If you’re feeling better about yourself, you’re going to have a better dating experience,” she explained. “We hope that’s something people will trust us to be able to do for them so that the (dating) outcomes are better.” 

After’s unique features put the user experience first, ensuring that your befores, afters, and everything in between are as exciting and fulfilling as possible. 

After Prioritizes People Instead of Profit 

“I really want this app to be guided by the user,” Katie told us. Her goal with After is to support the user’s romantic goals from a mental health standpoint. 

The idea for a mental health-focused dating app started to brew when Katie was Director of Communications at a hookup app. “I wanted something that prioritized more than just finding someone to date, but also their overall well being,” Katie said. 

Instead of focusing solely on obtaining dates, the app would focus on the emotions and mental health of its users.  

“Especially as a woman and knowing the unique experiences that women have on dating apps, I wanted to do better,” she said. “So that’s what really led me to creating an app that I could put my spin on as a woman, and create something I felt the industry needed.” 

The app’s unique features highlight each user’s mental and emotional wellness. If you don’t automatically think to check-in with yourself, then After will do it for you.

“We have these daily mental health check ins,” Katie described. “We’re definitely people over profit.” This means that After will let you know if you’re spending a little too much time on the app, too.

“If you’re on the app for hours on end, we want to slow you down and be like, ‘How are you feeling? Are you ego scrolling? Are you just wanting some type of satisfaction? Are you in a good head space?’”

With her experience in the dating app world, Katie has seen the negative side of dating apps. “We’re really aware that dating apps can be harmful to your self esteem and how you feel as a person,” she told us. “So we wanted to encourage people to take a pause.”

“We have really fun little daily mantras as well,” she added. The mantras are meant to keep the user grounded in reality, and to “let you know that whatever’s happening on this app is not a reflection of you as a person, which I think we all need to be reminded of,” Katie said. 

The app can also help you understand what you may be doing wrong as a dater, and can give you some pointers, too.  “(If) you’re not getting the reactions you wanted, we have some really great dating guides,” Katie told us. 

Instead of waiting for dating to get easier — and let’s be real, it probably won’t — hone your own dating skills. “We need to hold people a little bit accountable and make them better daters,” Katie asserted. 

‘Goodbye Ghosting’ Reminds Us To Be Humans 

After’s verification process ensures that you won’t match up with a catfish or an AI. It’s all part of After’s dedication to, as Katie put it, “take care of you.” 

“We’re trying our best to make sure that you feel secure on the app,” she said.  

One of After’s most unique features is its Goodbye Ghosting function. If you decide to unmatch with someone, you have to explain why. Like most of After’s features, it was born from the developers’ real experiences. 

“We’ve all been ghosted in life in one way or another,” Katie said. “It’s just easier to ghost somebody than to deal with conflict.” Admit it: You’ve considered ghosting people in the past, and maybe you even went through with it. 

“(People ghost) because they don’t want to have the tough conversations. So that’s something we took on. We wanted to be able to have those conversations for you, but hold you accountable and make you be a part of that,” Katie explained. 

Goodbye Ghosting is part of After’s ongoing effort to bring humanity back to dating apps. “It’s really easy to treat people like they’re not humans,” she pointed out. In a way, After uses tough love to encourage its users to treat people with respect. 

For example, if you match with someone but neglect to message them, the app will prompt you to do so within a week’s time. Eventually, your match will expire. But unlike on other dating apps, where your match simply dissolves into pixels, After has you describe why you stopped conversing with your match. 

Katie explained how the users choose from a menu of reasons. “Either the vibes don’t match or the lifestyles don’t match, or you’re too long-distance, whatever the reason may be. And then we craft a really thoughtful message for the other person, let them down gently, and give them the respect they deserve as a human.” 

She explained, “We take the pressure off of the other person, but also hold them accountable enough that they have to action the profile or they can’t use the rest of the app.”

If you’re like me, then you have the regrettable habit of procrastinating on dating apps. With After, you have to make active, consistent decisions about your love life.

In the future, users who are prompted to respond to a match will receive conversation suggestions from the app. “And we’ll help guide you on how to make the conversation better,” Katie added. 

After’s Future Developments Emphasize Connection 

“We have a lot of features that we’ve built with intentions,” Katie said, meaning that After’s team hopes to make the app’s features bigger, better, and more complex in the coming years. After’s goal with all of its features is to make people feel respected and safe using the app. 

Unlike other app developers, Katie wants to have a visible presence on her app.

“I plan on having a profile and letting people know who I am, (so they can) shoot me a message. Let’s talk about your feedback. So that’s one thing I’m really passionate and excited about,” she told us. 

As always, After dedicates itself to the user experience. “I never want to put a feature on the app that people don’t find value in,” Katie told us. 

Even her plans for AI integration are rooted in humanity. 

“We’re looking at utilizing AI in a really positive way, not in any way to replace humans,” she explained. “We have a fully female moderation team, single moms, who are really amazing women who I’m able to employ and give these opportunities to. And AI will never replace those opportunities.” 

Her plan is to use AI as a tool for efficiency, not as a stand-alone creator. “We have plans to look into how we can utilize AI to better our algorithm or to help send those guides to the right people,” she said. 

To celebrate its launch, After is offering the Clear Your Crush Cache Challenge. “After is challenging daters to delete ‘Joe Hinge’, ‘Emily Tinder’, and other unmemorable dating contacts from their phones for a chance at a year’s worth of dates — $1,500. The goal is to get you to go on better dates ‘after’ you’ve wasted so much time on superficial connection,” Katie told us.

When you prioritize your mental health, you may eventually feel more excited about leaving your comfort zone. After is a safe, virtual environment, after all.  

Katie told us, “My husband was not at all what I thought I was going for. And now eight years later, we’re happily married. So I really believe there’s something that could be just on the outside of your bounds.” Or filters, as in the After app. 

Katie sees a growing opportunity for indie dating apps, specifically among the Gen Z demographic. “Gen Z especially doesn’t want to use the same apps that we use,” she joked. 

“We want to be in our own lane in the future,” Katie said. “I want this amazing community of like minded people, and I want people to feel heard.”