Adding a New Feature
Hinge encourages meaningful and lasting romantic relationships, and believes in true love over casual hookups. What sets them apart from other dating apps are their engaging user profiles and prompts that result in more interesting and authentic connections. Instead of simply swiping left or right, users are encouraged to be more intentional in their matchmaking.
You’re scrolling through your phone to unwind at the end of a long day. You open Hinge. Someone named Adam has liked your photo of you hiking with your dog. He seems cute. Funny, likes dogs, and is over 6 feet tall?! You decide to match with Adam. What should I say? Should I let him start the conversation? “Maybe you can join us next time!” After a few days of exchanging pleasantries and flirty jokes, the conversation starts to idle. You go out with friends for the weekend and forget about Adam. By the time you return to the conversation, it has been a few days since the last response. You message him back hoping to revive the spark. No response.
Hinge has a lot of great features that help users start a conversation, but not enough to keep the conversations going. There’s a lot of pre-match guidance, but you’re pretty much on your own post-match.
How might we make the post-match experience more engaging, enjoyable and successful for Hinge users?
A new date feature within Hinge that keeps users engaged even after matching, and helps users go on more dates and make better connections by recommending date ideas based on match preferences.
Seeing the numbers helped put some things into perspective, but doesn’t help me understand the users or their personal experiences. I was able to gain better user insights through interviews and contextual observation.
Process: I conducted user interviews to learn more about user experiences, followed by contextual observation to observe users interacting with Hinge, completing tasks, and engaging with features.
Method: A combination of in-person and Zoom interviews and observation.
Participants: 6 participants between the ages of 25 and 31, with experience using dating apps, specifically Hinge. All participants were recruited from my personal network and the DesignLab community.
Timeline: Interviews were completed over 4 days.
Interview Questions:
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Using the Jobs to Be Done framework, I organized and categorized the needs of our Hinge users based on my research findings.
Narrowing down the user’s functional and emotional needs helped me identify the jobs they wanted to use Hinge to get done.
How might we help Hinge matches go on more quality dates that will lead to a meaningful relationship?
I came up with two different visual designs for the date feature that would both be effective in different ways. Which design is more effective for the core users?
Process: I conducted an A/B test to compare two different visual designs of the Hinge date feature to determine which design users resonated with and how effective each design is.
Method: Maze A/B test with open questions.
Participants: 13 participants who have used Hinge, recruited from my personal network and Designlab community.
Timeline: Maze tests conducted in 3 days.
The final prototype of Hinge's new 'Date' feature. Based on the results from the A/B testing, I made the following revisions.
I would like to continue testing and reiterating upon the new date feature to continue improving this new experience for Hinge users. I would also continue building out additional parts of the feature to make it more cohesive. What would changing or canceling a date look like? What would editing your date preferences look like?
Finally, Hinge’s current design system uses a lot of visuals and graphics, so I would like to find a way to incorporate that into the date questionnaire as users have said seeing the visuals make them more excited to go on a date but choosing the right visual representation is very important.
My initial vision for the date questionnaire was to use images to convey selections. In my research I found that users do not spend much time on the app, so I thought this would be a fun, almost gamified way, to keep users interested and engaged. While this idea did have some merit, as users said the images made them more excited to go on a date, the type of image used had a significant impact on what the users thought about that answer.
Ultimately, simple and effective design always beats a bit of flash.
Designing a new feature for an existing app meant I had to adhere to an already established design system, which I quite enjoyed. Having parameters to work within helped me stay focused and structured while still designing something new.
