The Case for a Queer-Friendly UX
There’s no Grindr for queer women, and that has a lot to do with design
In April, BuzzFeed News reported that Grindr — the ubiquitous app for queer men — gave away data to other companies, including data about users’ HIV status and when they were last tested. This resulted in an uproar, and the app announced several days later that it would no longer share such sensitive information.
As a queer woman, I’ve never used Grindr myself. That being said, I’m single, in my twenties, and live in New York City; needless to say, I’m no stranger to other dating apps. What’s more, I date women and men (and nonbinary people), so I’m familiar with just about everything else in the market. The Grindr controversy made me think about online dating and how app UX and design affect its users — especially queer users, and especially queer women.
I’ve known for quite some time that there is no “female” counterpart to Grindr, but I wanted to find out why.
I spoke with Robyn Exton, founder of the app HER, who told me that there wasn’t really a market for a queer-women Grindr — and hadn’t been for quite some time. What users responded to, she discovered, was the opportunity to find a larger LGBTQ community.
