Hinge
Dating App
Role
Design Director
UX/UI design
Creative direction
Illustration
Animation
Date
Apr 2015 - Sep 2019
Problem
When I joined Hinge in 2015, the product was a left/right swiping app with very basic user profiles. The big problems we faced with this version of Hinge were:
People were mostly using the app for validation. There was way too much swiping and matching, and barely any chatting. And obviously chatting is an important precursor to IRL dates.
Profiles were much too superficial to give anyone a good enough sense of who you should meet up with.
A combination of the product format and the brand meant that Hinge was lumped in with Tinder and perceived as a “hook-up” app. We couldn’t compete in the same category as Tinder, plus we were learning that the biggest unsolved problem was experienced by millennial women, who were seeking relationships, but weren’t finding them on any of the existing dating apps.
Solution
In 2016 we completely redesigned Hinge — both the product and the brand. The major surfaces for change in the product were:
The profile. The new Hinge is designed to give you a sense of someone’s personality. Users get to know potential dates through their unique answers to prompts, and personal information like religion, height, and politics.
The matching funnel. Instead of the traditional left/right swiping interface, every match begins by someone liking or commenting on a specific part of a profile, which acts as a conversation starter if a match is created. People can see anyone who likes them, and can respond to the like/comment at the moment of matching, to further initiate the conversation.
Chatting. The new matching flow made starting conversations easier. We also added ‘Your turn’ labels to the chat list, to remind people when it was their turn to message. And we added a ‘Hidden’ section in chat, where older conversations would move over time, to help people to focus on their active conversations.
Key Focus Areas
Our goal with the redesigned Hinge, was to get the largest % of our user base to find success on Hinge. Each month we aimed to get 80% of users receiving a like, 60% of our users receiving a match, and 40% of our users engaged in a two-way conversation:
To optimize a breadth of likes, we built a new recommendation algorithm, based on the stable marriage algorithm by Gale Shapley. This ensured that Likes were spread as evenly across the ecosystem as possible.
To optimize a breadth of matches, we forced decision making on the Likes list. We got users into a one-at-a-time flow as they decided which inbound Likes they wanted to match with.
To optimize a breadth of conversations, we gave people plenty of things to kickstart conversations from — prompts answers, videos, voice memos, relationship intentions, Instagram profile content, and more. We created an environment that surfaced more unique pieces of a person, that yielded more interesting and diverse conversations, which inspired users to chat more.
After about a year of iterating post re-launch, we achieved these metrics.
User retention rate was a big focus area. We strove for 20% day 30 retention. Though of course some churn from Hinge was good churn, due to people meeting significant others, starting relationships, and deleting the app. Funnily enough, deleting the app became the ultimate success metric at Hinge, and its tagline — “Designed to be deleted”.
Guiding Design Principles
Intentionality
Hinge was designed for people who were ready to be more intentional with their dating, and who were ready to find a long-term relationship. We needed to slow people down in the product, to ensure their “signalling” was deliberate and thoughtful, instead of cheap and thoughtless.
Reduce gamification
We avoided gamification tactics commonly employed by swiping apps. We wanted our users to take action based on their genuine romantic interest in another person, not just to get a dopamine hit. We didn’t want Hinge to be addictive.
Human
We wanted the design of profiles to emulate how you might start getting to know someone — discovering the different bits and pieces that make up someone’s personality and lifestyle. Profiles had an almost editorial feel, with an array of ways users could express who they were and what they were looking for.
Simplicity
Fundamentally Hinge had to be simple to navigate and use if it was to be adopted by the masses.
Results
After years of iterating, Hinge became the fastest growing dating app in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. Hinge has engineered more than 32M romantic meetups since its launch. Hinge was acquired by Match Group in 2018, and generates ~$400M in annual revenue today.
Technical Achievements
We patented the ‘We Met’ feature, which was designed to check in on how users' dates are going IRL. After exchanging phone numbers with a Match, Hinge follows up to hear how the date went so they can make better recommendations in the future.
Visual Language
We used a thick black line throughout Hinge’s visual identity — including within the wordmark, illustrations, iconography, and loading animations. The line represented the journey that is using Hinge, dating, building new connections, and forming relationships. Branded illustrations and animations were used throughout the product experience, and were designed to bring a sense of lightheartedness and optimism to a process that can be daunting. I loved playing on the tagline 'Designed to be Deleted'. The representation of different ethnicities, body types, abilities, and backgrounds was really important. Creating an animation system for all interactions was really important for maintaining a consistent tone. Animations were designed to feel snappy, but not overwhelming or frantic.
Art Direction
Photography and videography is notoriously difficult to pull off well in the dating category. We avoided cheesy couples’ photos, and instead captured the micro moments of real, every-day couples in the early stages of dating.
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