How Hinge plays with your psychology to get you a match

Photo by Jodie DS

Few months ago, I was on this dating app called Hinge (you guessed it right — for the noble purpose of ‘research’). While navigating through Hinge, or rather while researching the app, I found some super smart UX flows that actually led me to engage more & more with Hinge.

Before we get into the specifics of these UX flows in Hinge, let’s talk a bit about dating in general. And for that, let’s do a quick mental exercise. Imagine you’re standing in a bar and there’s a really hot person on the other side of the area who you’d really want to pursue. In that moment, how do you feel? Do you confidently walk up to them, or do you stand there frozen never really making a move. When I picture myself in the same situation, here’s how I feel:

• Should I walk up to him?
• If I did walk up to him, what will I say?
• If I did walk up and said something, will I end up saying something meaningful?
• Will he like me?
• What if he doesn’t like me and says something rude in return?
• Oh, he’s with friends! What if he rejects me in front of all of them?
• What if he and his friends mock me?
• Oh my friends are with me too. What will they say if he rejects me?
• What if he rejects me now and bumps into me tomorrow in the supermarket?

And tons of such FEARS!

In summary:

Walking up to someone to ask them out is hard — there’s fear of rejection

Getting rejected is harder — there’s fear of bumping into them again and having your ego trampled

And bumping into someone in the supermarket the next morning after they let you down previous night in the bar is hardest — here’s fear of being recognized, mocked, or introduced as “the guy I rejected last night” to her friend

Enter Tinder!

You’re now sitting in the comfort of your couch. No more do you have to walk up to someone. No more do you have to solve probability maths in your head whether that dude will want to make out with you later. All your insecurities are comfortably placed behind a screen, probably munching on something, on a nice couch. Tinder gives you an altar no product can — suddenly every person in the ecosystem is a probable match. You can right swipe hundreds of them and Tinder won’t put a limit.

Problem no. 1 solved.

Once you send an interest, Tinder smartly chooses to NOT show you who all you sent an interest to, or what’s the status of your interests. In your interest, all of it magically goes in a black hole. If someone accepts you back, you get a notification and a match. But if someone doesn’t, Tinder won’t let you care — there are more fish to catch in Tinder’s pond ocean. If you sent a few interests you can comfortably live in the glory that none of those people ever came back on Tinder and hence didn’t accept your interest.

Because in the world of Tinder, rejection doesn’t exist.

Problem no. 2 solved.

Not only do rejections not exist in the world of Tinder, the 3 second swipe UX of Tinder doesn’t even let you build a mental image or a recall of someone you’re swiping right or left. Once swiped, the potential matches go in black hole and because you spend only a few seconds swiping them, you have absolutely no recall of them. So tomorrow, if they actually bump into you, you won’t ever be able to tell if you saw them on Tinder a night before.

(Not to add, people look different on their Instagram, Facebook, and Tinder, than they do in real lives. Bummer I know ;))

Problem no. 3 also solved.

In short, Tinder’s UX solved the following problems:

1. Big, bold mugshots that tell you to take a decision on a face in less than 10 seconds. (of course, if you’re the non-shallow kinds, you take some friction and swipe up to read more about them)
2. The ability to swipe tens of hundreds of potential matches in just a few seconds leading to very less recall
3. No history of who you swiped left or swiped right
4. No way of knowing if the profile you’re seeing on your phone in the moment — swiped you right OR haven’t seen your profile yet.
5. Reverse the above, and you’ll infer that someone who you right swipe doesn’t know you had right swiped them and hence they technically don’t reject your proposal.

But there are a few problems Tinder still doesn’t solve.

Let’s assume you get a handful of matches. Now you have a match in hand (like literally!) and:

• You have no idea why you swiped them right. That was probably just to up your probability game.
• You don’t know anything about them other than a few stats like their age, their location and a few pictures
• How do you strike a conversation with someone you don’t know such that you get a response (Tinder gives you absolutely no cues)
• What if you do get a response, but they turn out to be creepy, not the most tasteful word choosers or in my case, people with bad grammars (this is intentional :|) or those whu typ lyk dis?!

Enter Hinge!

And its wonderful UX choices. Let’s start:

1. Some of Hinge’s powerful UX starts right from its on-boarding. To create a profile for yourself, you’re not just asked to upload your pictures and tell your age, location and other nonsensical data points but also to answer some random, fun questions about you. Questions such as:

“Two truths and a lie!”

“Never have I ever”

“Typical Sunday”

“I geek out on”

The kind of questions you’d love thinking about. And the kind of questions you’d love answering. Guess why? We LOVE to talk about ourselves! It just makes us feel good. See these:

(2) You said a few things about yourself. Made you feel good. Now lets swipe see a few profiles to pursue. A typical profile on Hinge is not just a big picture taking up most of the screen but a picture plus an answer to a random question (one of which you also answered while creating your own profile). As you scroll down, you’ll see a mish-mash of pictures and a few interesting questions that people have answered. Hinge, through its UX, keeps you invested in the process of finding a date. You spend a good amount of time looking through a profile and reading fun things about them. You also know a bit more about them, unlike Tinder, to make a choice. And aren’t all good looking people great before they open their mouth (to kiss or talk ;))?

Here’s how a typical Hinge profile looks when you fire the app:

And here’s how a full profile would typically look like: (In the interest of not invading someone’s privacy, posting a screenshot of my own profile.)

L to R as you scroll down a profile

Side note 1: If you want to sponsor my London trip, please to DM :D

Side note 2: The last few lines are the traits of someone in my life I already brag about. A LOT. :)

(3) Hinge also doesn’t let you get bored. Or ignore them! Each profile isn’t just a mixed layout of answers + pictures but also a different set of questions answered. Hinge does it all to keep you invested AND interested in their product.

(4) Unlike Tinder, Hinge doesn’t let you do a left or right swipe. You either show disinterest in a profile by tapping a ‘X’ icon OR you can like specific things in a profile (an image or an answer) which is then followed by a prompt to write them a message. Hinge makes you put an effort into your proposal — the traditional way it’s done. And the way it can lead to higher conversions! (Imagine swiping random profiles v/s getting some thoughtful messages for a proposal)

(5) The fourth, and the bit that I loved the most, is the fact that you don’t just like or dislike a profile on Hinge. You can choose to like a picture OR an answer on someone’s profile. Soon after you press the *heart* button you’re also prompted to write a message along with that super specific like. Talk about conversation starters? And more so, super contextual conversation starters. Hinge has it all baked in their UX! See this:

(6) Like the good product it is, Hinge shows you who all sent you likes. But doesn’t store any history of who all you sent likes to. Hinge doesn’t want you to know if you’re rejected. Good products don’t break your heart. ;)

Till so far, I’ve shown you how you’re investing your time in sending likes to the people you’d potentially want to date after learning some fun things about them. You also get to like specific things about people. And start a very contextual conversation with them. The recipe of getting a like back and possibly even kick-starting a conversation. Now let’s come to the other side. The way Hinge shows you people who have liked you or sent you a proposal is super interesting too!

(7) Here’s how you get a proposal on Hinge.

Notice how someone has replied to something I wrote and is giving me an opportunity to skim through their profile in a different light altogether. I got my narcissistic kick from the fact that the person who approached me took the pain to go through my profile, liked something interesting about me, and took time to comment on it. The least I could now do is look at their profile in a more invested manner too. And maybe send back an interesting reply myself too?

And best of all, the product’s UX is making me do all of this. All so naturally.

(8) In the best previous image, did you notice that I have 50+ such likes (perks of being a woman, yeah!)? Narcissistic me takes a hot seat and jumps in to see who all liked me, what specifically they liked — was it a picture or one of my clever answers, and what did they have to say to me! But I don’t want to do it one profile at a time. I have a pot of gold and I don’t want to take out one coin at a time. What I want is load up my arms fully. Hinge understands that. And how beautifully it solves that!

Notice the screenshot below

You’ll see an icon for a grid view where I can access all the profiles of whoever liked me, all at once. And so I do, but Hinge being a smart product and having just enough enough psychology understanding allows me to see all the 50+ likes that I got BUT all greyed out. ;) It asks me to upgrade if I want to see all the likes in one go.

That’s not all! The thing I found even smarter was that as I scroll further, I can see the first few words of the messages people have sent me. Ouch! The narcissistic me is now jumping up and down on the chair! How do I not upgrade and read all the cute things these men wrote about me?! Again, it’s all in the UX baby — it has shown me enough, and obscured enough to make me curious about what lies behind the upgrade! And like a good product, Hinge is playing with my mind to make me things it wants me to do

Reserved the best for the last. And that’s Hinge’s chat section.

(9) Have you ever had the anxiety to read a message ASAP on WhatsApp but you don’t want to reply to it right away? What makes you scared about doing that? The blue tick? You don’t want someone to know that you read their message but didn’t reply choice-fully.

Hinge also solves this by not giving a read feedback to your senders. So you can safely read and not reply instantly, without letting the other person know. But Hinge takes this a step further and shows a bright blue “your turn” label on each chat to continuously remind you that it’s your turn to reply — to keep the message on your radar. So a 2 second glance on the screen tells you whether it’s your turn to reply to them or yours was the last message.

Also bonus points for the “Your Turn” copy. It sends out a message that the other person made an effort to say something and now it’s your turn to reply to them.

If you reached till the end, you deserve a light-hearted joke :) (And this comes from a real life incident)

Me: I downloaded Hinge and Tinder on my phone last week. Just letting you know.

Him: *says nothing*

Me: What?! It’s my age to have fun!

Him: It’s your age to also feature on Forbes 30 Under 30. Why aren’t you doing that?

Me: *says nothing*

In closing:

Fin.

P.S. Thanks to FacePixelizer for the blur effect on screenshots

You can reach out to me on Twitter at @taruna2309 and on email at tarunawrites@gmail.com