When Bad Design Might Be Good
I might be going out on a limb here, but just hear me out.
I’ve been on-and-off using Tinder to date for a while now. I haven’t been very serious about dating, so every time people would recommend “better” dating apps to me I waved it off.
(Tinder seems to be universally acknowledged as one of the most hook-up f*ckboi catfish casual-encounter game-like dating app options, so the thought is you can find better dates and better men and a better app experience elsewhere. And indeed, for one of the most popular dating apps, I cannot emphasize enough how incredibly bad the engineering is on Tinder. My profile has been turned off for weeks, and I routinely get mystery notifications from the app (although honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not a bug but a built-in trick to get people back on the app). And when I was using it, I routinely had messages vanish and appear again, or display in the chat-list screen but not in the actual chat, interactions were glitchy, and the whole experience was largely one of frustration—and rarely because of the people I was matching with.)
Recently though, I saw Hinge on a friend’s phone and was immediately impressed by the aesthetic. Curious about it, I tried switching over. The app is quite lovely to look at, and so far I haven’t noticed any glitchiness. I also prefer the profiles, which are less image-focused and get you to engage more with the content that the people are writing about themselves.
HOWEVER. These are the flakiest and least committed people I have encountered online thus far. Hardly any of them want to carry on a conversation with me, which has never historically been my experience online. On Tinder there were, often to my annoyance, always several people who wanted to message all day, or at least wanted to message me a lot more than I wanted to message them. And, okay, maybe it’s Hinge’s algorithm. Maybe there’s a different vibe on this app and I don’t know the rules yet. And I get that this is just my individual experience and certainly doesn’t mean anything about the app. But I get a couple messages from someone, I reply, and then I never hear back from them again. They don’t un-match me either, so it seems unlikely that I’m seriously turning people off.
Hinge is very charming to use. It looks nice. It seems to not be so intentionally gamified the way Tinder is, but the aesthetic appeal makes you want to keep browsing—gotta see more profiles! Moar! And best of all, the app is not frustrating to use (at least until it comes to the people on it).
Tinder, on the other hand, is the polar opposite. I’m guessing that most people on Tinder (the ones who aren’t on there just to catfish) are only going to be on it when truly necessary, aka when they are interested enough in someone to message them. They’re trying to get those digits and get off the app, usually. And this may be due to the truly unpleasing design and function of the app, which doesn’t keep you going just because it’s sort of lovely and satisfying. Unlike Hinge.
So, here’s my hypothesis: Tinder’s aesthetic and usability failure is actually a useful design outcome (I’m not going so far as to say this was an intentional move on Tinder’s behalf).
Often, having a crappy design means only people who are serious about accomplishing a task are going to remain on your product. No one else is going to play around with it just for fun, because it’s not fun. Many products don’t need to keep you around unnecessarily, so it’s only a benefit when your online banking experience is enjoyable and not frustrating. It’s not going to make you do any extra banking beyond what is convenient.
But for some products, discouraging people from wanting to use it all the time might provide a nice filter that actually enhances the real-world experience for users. If the goal of your app is to get people to chat with each other and then meet up in person, you want to design an app that somehow filters out those who aren’t really trying to go on dates, but are just there mindlessly. Having a platform that is frustrating to interact on could even be a design choice than enhances the output and outcomes.
Normally we think of the aesthetics and usability as core (if not the exclusive) considerations of a product’s/service’s design. And if these things fail on some level, the design is “bad”. But if we focus more deeply on the purpose and outcomes we want for users/customers/people, and not just the surface-level appearance or second-level tasks, we may find more creative and deeper opportunities to design effective products at the experience level.
It’s too bad, in the case of a dating app (or other product for which the stated goal is not in itself the usage of the product), that fulfilling this purpose might best be done at the expense of the in-app experience. Because, you know, it’s not terribly enjoyable to have an ugly and frustrating experience, and it probably makes it harder for the company to succeed, even though they may have your best interests in mind. (Again, not suggesting Tinder did this intentionally. But who knows?) Though Tinder has, somehow, found a way to succeed despite the seemingly bad design (and engineering—it’s really so bad).
Ideally you could balance both successfully moving people beyond needing your product, and making the experience positive, without making it so pleasing that people don’t want to put your product down and fail to accomplish their original aim. (After all, you’re trying to matchmake, not provide them with a game. Right?) But that may not always be possible, especially within a realm as stimulating and intentionally addictive as apps. So if it’s best for your users to hate your design and want to be done with it at quickly as possible? Well…maybe that’s some truly good design you have there.
