Hinge Redesign
Team lead of 2 other designers in redesigning Hinge to further cultivate a more meaningful connections for users who are looking for love.
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TEAM
Guan Lao
Shreya Signh
Cesylia Portilo -
MY ROLE
UI/UX Designer
Project Lead -
DURATION
3 Weeks
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TOOLS
Figma
Illustrator
Miro
Slack
Project Overview
HINGE is a popular dating app that has brought millions of users both romance and heartbreak! While the app has some innovative features, many users prefer other dating apps, such as Tinder, as their primary platform for finding love. As part of a design club at the University of Davis, our team was tasked with analyzing and redesigning Hinge. I was assigned to a group of two other students who are still learning about design. As the design lead, I was responsible for guiding our team in ways to improve HINGE.
Challenge
Redesign HINGE to further cultivate meaningful connections for users who are looking for love.
Solutions
Implementing a ‘back button’ during the onboarding process to allow users to make mistakes and adding a ‘Skip’ button for user to skip unwanted or sensitive questions.
Adding a Bio & Passion tags during onboarding to help build a better understanding and connection among users.
Enhancing the 'X' button with a color and relocating the 'Undo' button to better complement its function.
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The Process
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3
4
Empathize
Competitive audit: Tinder & Bumble & Hinge
We compared the most well-known dating apps in the U.S. such as Tinder and Bumble to Hinge. We want to learn what made them so successful and why users chose to use these two apps and not other dating apps like Hinge.
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PRO
Allow interest tags, and shared interest tags to be highlighted
Tinder events and swipe surges gain more user retention
Left & right swipe makes it easy to use
Use of many romantic colors to attract audiences.
CON
Users are less serious about fostering meaningful connections due to the style of the app
Have to click on the profile to read the bio
Can't swipe when on the bio page
Lackluster profiles due to loose requirements on photos or bio length
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PRO
Question games serve as an icebreaker between users
Has both prompts and a bio option
Allows for interest tags
Only women can initiate a conversation which makes the app safe for women
Matches disappear in 24 hours, this could promote user retention
CON
There is not much detail about personality in the profile
Men can not send the first message
Users can't join Bumble without having a Facebook account
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PRO
Allow you to see who sent you a heart for free
Ethnicity and religion filter for free
Allow you to focus on a couple of matches at once
The black color palette gave the app a more serious and committed vibe
Prompt and audio prompt
CON
Do not have interest tags which made it hard to connect with other users
Do not have a bio feature that shows more about the users
Doesn't allow you to skip steps during onboarding
Secondary Research
Due to 24-hour time constraints, conducting primary research isn't feasible. Therefore, we have opted to gather all our research data online in the hope of gaining a better understanding of how phones can impact a student's focus.
In the survey conducted by Tindell and Bohlander, 92% of college students reported using their phones to send text messages during class.
This year, Americans check their phones 344 times per day. And last year, it was 262 times per day—that’s a 31% increase.
According to Harvard University, Students themselves are aware that in-class multitasking does not promote learning; in one survey, 80% of students agreed that multitasking in class decreases their ability to pay attention.
Mobile phone distraction has a negative and significant association with psychological well-being. So much so that mobile phone usage limits the cognitive ability of the user so that they are not able to focus on daily routine activities.
Several studies have compared students who texted during a lecture versus those who did not. Those who texted typically took lower-quality notes, retained less information, and did worse on tests about the material.
Share of adults in the United States who use dating sites or apps as of 2020 by age according to Statista.
Some reasons why people use dating apps according to sources according to YouGovAmerica
Primary Research
User Interview and usability testing of the current Hinge app
We conducted in-depth interviews and moderated/unmoderated testing with experienced dating app users and users with no experience ages ranging from 20 to 30 years old.
We want to learn from them and see what to expect from a dating app why they prefer other apps over Hinge and some pain points they encountered when using the app. As for users with no experience, we want to learn what are some ways that could motivate them to use a dating app to find love. After the interview, we created an empathy map to gain a better insight into our users.
Empathy Map
To better understand our users, we made an empathy map of what our users have say, think, do and feel
Define
Insight from Finding
From our interview, some insights we learned:
Most users associate dating apps with Tinder and hooking up and sex.
Users don't use dating apps because they don't trust dating apps and are afraid of getting scammed.
When users look for love, they look for common interests and personalities so then they would have more in common thus leading to better conversation.
Users who have experience with dating apps don't use HINGE because they have fewer relatable prompts and fewer features in general compared to their competitors.
Many also suggested adding interest tags as it easily allows users to see if they share common interests with other users.
Important quotes from our moderated & unmoderated user testing:
"The 'X' icon could be more noticeable, make it more noticeable in a creative way?"
"Undo or refresh buttons are confusing when browsing matches. The placement right now does not work. I did not know what this button was for at first".
"Is there a tutorial? I feel like a quick tutorial right after you created your account would be helpful?"
"Where is the skip option in the onboarding process? I feel like it is asking way too many questions. Why can't I come back later to fill it out when I have more time?"
Ideation
How might we question / Brainstorm
As a team, we came up with as many possible solutions on Miro that could help us solve our problem. Then we all voted for the problems that we want to prioritize and came up with different solutions to the problem
1. Adjust the position & color of 'X' and undo icons in the matching screen.
Tweaking the size and color of the X and undo button allows for an easier user experience.
2. Onboarding: Tutorial, add skip & back arrow in the onboarding process.
A tutorial at the beginning of creating an account would be very helpful.
Including 'skip' and 'back' buttons during the onboarding process as it would be much more convenient for users.
3. Passion tags & Biography feature
Adding a biography allows users to introduce themselves and understand other users better.
Adding interest tags allows you to see other users’ main passions. Highlighting shared interests between you and different users to spark a conversation.
Crazy 8 Sketches
As a project lead, I conducted a quick workshop to create sketches for possible options and key features we wanted to prioritize using the 'Crazy 8 method'. Then again, we shared our sketches and voted for the best potential options to move forward.
Wireframes
A & B Testing
One of our focus is to improve the user interface of the "X" and "Undo" buttons which is the CTA buttons for Hinge. But we don't know which direction to lean toward, so we conducted A & B Testing with two versions that we think are the strongest with 16 different users.
Version A
5 out of 16 users prefer version A
"X" in every photo/ prompt might create a cognitive overload.
Users are confused about the purpose of the "X" icon on each category.
Users felt that the "X" on each section might encourage them to click it.
"Would the other person get notifications of which section is disliked?"
Version B
11 out of 16 users prefer version B
The undo button is more noticeable and makes more sense next to the "X" button
Adding color to the "X" button made it more noticeable
"It is simple and straightforward"
"The position of the "X" is not distracting"
Version A: ‘X’ in every photo/prompt
Version B: ‘X’ & ‘Undo’ button fixed at bottom
Final Solution & Prototype
Onboarding Process
Before Redesign
Lacking a back button restricts users from revising their answers, leading to a poor user experience.
Hinge features a higher number of onboarding questions compared to other dating apps, but there is no option to skip a question.
After Redesign
Back button: Allow users to make mistakes
Skip button: Users should have the option to skip sensitive or unwanted questions if they are uncomfortable answering. However, it's important to note that there might be certain non-skippable questions.
Before Redesign (Original)
After Redesign
Building a bond: Bio & Passion Tags in onboarding
Bio & Passion: Help build a better understanding and connection with others.
Iconography: Added icons to assist people who may have reading disabilities or linguistic barriers to better understand the passion tags.
Bio & Passion tags added to the match screen
Common Passion: Passion tags would be highlighted if two users shared the same passion which made it easier why users to connect.
Match Screen
Before Redesign
The placement of the 'undo' button is confusing and not noticeable.
The 'X' or the reject button is not noticeable according to most users from our usability study.
After Redesign
Added color to the 'X' button so it is a bit more obvious and moved the position of the 'undo' button next to the 'X' button so it would make more sense to the function of the undo button.
Before Redesign (Original)
After Redesign
Tutorial
Initially, the page "What Works" which is like a tutorial to HINGE but it was very hidden in the settings but it is very helpful to new users so we decided to use this as our quick tutorial right after onboarding to inform users what the app offers.
The page header 'what works' was confusing to some users. So we will be changing it to ‘Get Started’ as a tutorial.
Added passion tags and bio cards to the tutorial page.
Before Redesign (Original)
After Redesign
Final Prototype
Check out the Hinge Redesign.
Feel free to reach out if you have any question!
Reflection
Takeaway
We learned a lot about user preferences in dating apps from interviews and studying Tinder and Bumble. Our team's Hinge Redesign earned us the title of Most Customer-Centric Experience team, reflecting our dedication to understanding user needs, especially with newer team members onboard.
Next Step
We plan to conduct more usability testing with our final prototype and gather feedback from real users. Success will be measured by an increase in real dates and relationships, along with improved usage and retention rates to see if our redesign is successful.
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