DateSafe: Safety Feature Add
Client: Hinge | 2024 | Duration: 2 weeks | 4 Person Group | Role: UX/UI Designer & Project Manager
Despite romantic success, online daters often experience underlying anxieties about meeting their matches in person. Hinge, a freemium dating app, sets itself apart by valuing the number of real-life dates over the time spent on the app. This has allowed ~15 million daily users to aim for turning digital romance into real-life chemistry. This study represents my research, methodologies, discoveries, and overall development of DateSafe.
Scope of Work
To prepare for user interviews, I conducted a comprehensive business analysis of Hinge, including studying Match Group's 10K report to align with their business model, initiatives, and market response to Hinge and it's industry. Insights from this analysis informed our project objectives, research goals, questions, and the selection of competitive benchmarks for Hinge.
My Objective:
To improve, enhance or add valuable features that allows Hinge to meet it's success criteria as the app "Designed to be Deleted"
Research Objective:
To understand user pain points with dating apps and learn what users expect for an ideal dating experience.
Methodology: Google Survey Form, User Interviews, and Affinity Mapping
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-27 survey respondents
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7 interview participants
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C&C Analysis
Research
User Interview & Survey
"I desire a long-term romantic connection"
"I'm reluctant to meet matches in person due to safety concerns"
"I have a friend who faced harm meeting a match for the first time."
Competitive Landscape
Engagement: Casual Dating
User Model: gamified dating/casual
Safety: Moonlight Third-Party Integration
Engagement: Serious Dating
User Model: Curated matching
Safety: Block, Report, Photo Verify
Engagement: Serious Dating
User Model: Women Initiate
Safety: Noonlight Third-Party Integration
User interviews indicated that users are more concerned about meeting a match in person than facing imminent danger. Unlike ride-share apps, dating apps can't easily implement real-time tracking due to the spontaneous nature of dating culture. Instead, Hinge and its competitors provided user verification mechanisms or integrated with third-party solution providers to solve imminent danger concerns such as noonlight. However, none, including Hinge had addressed the anxieties of dating in our modern world.
Defining the User
If Hinge allows users to securely share planned date details with a trusted contact, it will alleviate concerns about in-person meetings, providing a safer approach to dating.
"Hi I'm Jasmine, I am an existing Hinge user looking for a serious relationship. I've had a few uncomfortable interactions and hesitate to meet in person without some kind of safety measure that gives me comfort and control."
Goals
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Find a compatible partner
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Meet new people with similar interests
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Feel safe while meeting matches from Hinge
Behaviors
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Anxious about meeting matches in person for the first time
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Lack of in-app Safety precautions
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Uncertainty about inauthentic user profiles
Needs
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Safety measures that provide peace of mind on date
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Comfort and control before the date
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adequate in-app safety precautions
Pain Point
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Match concern: catfish or ill-intentioned persons
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discomfort meeting stranger conflicts with desire for long-term partnership
Jasmine, 32
Single
Nurse
Ideation Station
The industry uses panic buttons, or identity verification to address safety concerns, but users prioritize comfort and peace of mind when meeting strangers.
I focused on emphasizing feature that are low-cost, low-effort, and high impact. Integrating complex safety technology, like panic button, can be costly and only addresses immediate threat. Instead, allowing users to share date details from a single interface offers a simple, cost effective solution to reduce or eliminate users anxieties.
Wire Flow
Data-Pop Up Screen
Data Card Screen
Send MSG Screen
Mid-Fi Usability Test
Maze Remote Unmoderated | 12 Participants
Success Rate: 83%
Goal: 80%
Misclick: 65%
Goal: 40%
Avg Time: 60s
Goal: 45s
User Feedback
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Terms & Conditions: users misclicked in an attempt to accept T&C's.
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radio button too small, enlarge for ease of use.
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Onboarding: users didn't understand that DateSafe was sharable.
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Update UX Copy.
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Date Change: user want indication their changes were captured in addition to auto-updated DateSafe information.
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keyword monitoring system for auto update and tab in messages to edit and track all date cards.
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Discover Page: Distracted by "X" on Justin, and existing button to discourage gamification on discover page.
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Notification icon on messages as indicator for users.
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Editing Date Information: Edit icon overpowered by "new" introductory feature text.
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remove text, enlarge ellipses icon
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Hi-Fi Usability Test
Remote Moderated | 6 Participants
Success Rate: 100%
Goal: 100%
Misclick: 0%
Goal: 30%
Avg Completion Time: 43s
Goal: 45s
User Feedback
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Clarity & Intuitiveness: Users generally found the interface simple and easy to use.
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Hesitation: Users reported no issues, on-boarding made feature "apparent" and useful.
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Automatic Updates: Users expressed a desire for date information to auto-populate based on updated in-app messages. This presents an area for growth in the feature, leveraging existing technology such as a keyword monitoring system.
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Feeling Safe: Users perceived the feature positively, noting a sense of safety and organization for upcoming dates.
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Naming Confusion: Some users found the interchangeable use of "Date Card" and "DateSafe" confusing during testing, suggesting a need for clarity in the terminology.
When asked to rate their likelihood of leveraging this feature on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not likely and 5 being very likely, 83% of users scored 5, while 17% scored 4.
Final Prototype, Considerations & Next Steps
Despite receiving positive reviews and a 4.8/5 star rating for the safety feature, we are committed to refining our user experience based on feedback.
While my assumption is that Hinge currently uses a keyword monitoring system to identify details like time, date, and location. This feature can be further by integrating precise Geolocation APIs. This enhancement will enable trusted contacts to track their dating friends and implement a Panic Buttons for emergency alerts.
Although these enhancements will require increased expenses, effort, and additional support from dev ops and supporting teams. I believe the enhancing the DateSafe capabilities will be crucial for delivering a safer and more user-friendly experience for our subscribers.
As a privately held company, I had to make a few educated assumptions about Hinge's business, network infrastructure and third-party dependencies etc. to develop a user-center solution.
It will be necessary to review Terms and Conditions and ensure privacy compliance is met within the design and copy. Furthermore, we leveraged Hinge's existing keyword monitoring system to reduce costs and efforts. However, for future enhancements, we aim to optimize costs further and integrate additional APIs to expand the value of our feature.
The design as it stands, plus the planned enhancements, would require discussions and cross-functional collaboration with legal, product management, engineering and other relared business units.
Select "Mark" for Pop Up Prompt
Select "Josh" to change date of meet up to the 4th.
Reflection
This project was the highlight of my apprenticeship at General Assembly. It allowed me to marry my leadership and newly acquired design skills.
Working with such a talented group, each bringing unique strategies to the table, made the 2-week sprint feel like we had been collaborating for much longer. The experience was invaluable and greatly enhanced my design abilities.