Improving The Rewind and Chat Features of The Dating App

9 min readNov 18, 2022

A study on increasing the desire of non-premium users to subscribe to a premium plan through the improvement of two features

Introduction

Hi everyone, I am Ana Fitriyani or you can call me Fitri. In the past few months, I have been participating in a UI/UX design Bootcamp held by dibimbing.id. The first case study I worked on about the Tinder app would be used as my first portfolio.

About Tinder

Tinder is a global online dating platform and is available in 190+ countries and 40+ languages. This is an online dating and geosocial networking application which allows the user to meet new people, expand the social network, or meet locals when traveling. The main features of Tinder are swiping a user’s profile (left or right) and chatting between two “matched” users. (Wikipedia & Tinder, 2022)

My Role: UX Researcher, UX Designer

Scope: User research, analyzing, user flow, information architecture, wireframing, mock-up, design system, prototyping, and Usability Testing (UT)

Timeline: The research process for approximately 4 weeks

Tools: Google Forms, Zoom, Google Meet, Whatsapp, Google Sheets, & Slides

Project Type: Personal Portfolio

1. Empathize

Planning The Research

Research Plan

Research Background

Approximately only 10.7 million Tinder users have subscribed from a total of 75 million active users in 2022. In Indonesia, in 2021, 57.6% of respondents use the dating app Tinder to find their partner. -Katadata

Objective & Hypothesis

The research objective of this research is how to increase the desire of non-premium users to become premium plan subscribers, with several hypotheses as follows:

Users use Tinder to find partners or friends, to be able to enjoy unlimited likes & rewind features, get access to any location, and free from ads
Users are more comfortable communicating virtually, they don’t have time to find new friends/partners in person
The application is more secure with the profile verification system
Adding features needed, such as features that show premium users

Research Methodologies

1. Survey

2. In-depth Interview

3. Company data

Respondent Target & Criteria

Target: Tinder users, who have or have never subscribed to a premium plan

Criteria:

Demographic: worker, aged 21+ (already have income), single
Behavior: active users of the app in the last 1 month
Psychographic: looking for a partner vs. looking for friends

Conduct Research

2. Define

Primary Research

Recruiting Respondents & User Survey

Tinder-using friends and colleagues were asked during this research stage and finally, 23 people were collected who filled out the questionnaire.

Insights from The Survey

A total of 52.2% (12 people) of respondents chose to use the Tinder application because it has more users, and 43.5% (10 people) chose Tinder because it has an attractive UI design and is easy to use
60.9% of respondents use the Tinder application to find a partner
81.8% of respondents (9 people) feel that Tinder gives a ‘fake happiness’ experience
Of the 23 respondents, none of them have ever used the Premium Plan
Aspects that need to be improved include those related to security, account verification, chat features, and filtering users by category

For more details, you can check the entire questionnaire result through this link.

Qualitative Research

In-depth interviews with Tinder users were conducted to find out their behavior, likes, pain points, and needs/expectations in using the Tinder application. Five individuals from the survey process were selected, three women and two men.

Main Findings

Affinity Diagram Analysis

Theme: Behavior

Respondents use the Tinder application every night, once a month, and three times a month
Respondents use Tinder in different situations, including when they are bored, when they really want to find a partner, and in their spare time when they need friends to hang out
The motivation of users on the Tinder application is to find a partner, make as many new friends as possible, and network. Users who don’t have a partner use Tinder to find a partner, while those who already have a partner tend to use Tinder to find friends

Theme: Likes

There are no obstacles encountered in the swipe feature
On Tinder, we could enable/disable our location tracking, so users feel more secure. Because if location tracking could not be disabled/ turn off, the user feels stalked and it is violating their privacy
Users find it exciting because they can meet new friends who are unexpectedly compatible and have the same interests

Theme: Pain Points

Feature Aspect

There is no reply feature in chat so the chat experience feels less efficient, especially if users send a lot of chats and overlap each other
Could not send photos in chat, but can make video calls (making video calls with new people is uncomfortable and awkward)
There are no filter features, ex: height, religion, interests, etc
Tinder could not filter out real people or people with bad intentions
Could not undo the swipe

2. Economic Aspect

The premium plan price is expensive and not worth it, in terms of the available features

3. Technology Aspect

Chat often takes a long time to load and even crashes

4. Content Aspect

It’s uncomfortable to meet people who are too random
Bios and descriptions are not representative enough, so users don’t get an idea whether the people they meet are suitable or not
Annoying chatbots (online shop promotion)
Discomfort due to identity fraud could lead to crime
Discomfort due to sexual crime/ harassment

Theme: Needs/ Expectations

Users need a profile verification system for security
Users need a sub-category/ filtering feature to find a more suitable partner/ friend
Users need the reply & send photo feature in chat, so they could have a better conversation
Users can use undo swipe, so they can return to the previous match

User Persona

Customer Journey Map

Way Forward

Recommendations

Based on affinity diagram analysis, user persona, and customer journey map, the recommendations proposed are:

Action Plan

Based on the table, the 2 recommendations in the green table are prioritized because they are closely related to desirability and viability, and benefit both parties (users and businesses).

from the user side: with improvements to the verification and filtering features, users will feel safe in using the application, Filters/sub-categories save users time in searching for the ideal partner
from the business side: the improvement of the two features, it will attract a lot of premium plan subscribers because users feel it is worth it and generate higher profits for the company

Limitation

The proposed design of the mock-up and prototype is limited to the rewind (undo swipe) and chat features.
The UT process is carried out on activities to rewind (undo swipe) partners on the swipe page and to chat with the matched partner with added features such as quick reactions, reply based on the chat bubble, sending a picture, unsent chat, and delete chat room.

3. Ideate

User Flow

The following is the user flow of the activities swipe right or left, find a matched partner, and chat with a partner.

Information Architecture (IA)

The IA in this application is especially in the activities of rewind (undo swipe) and chat a matched partner.

Wireframe

Before creating a mock-up, a wireframe is made to get ideas for the design outline that I would work on. The redesign of the Tinder application could be checked in the following picture.

Mock-up

Prototype

After carrying out the empathize, define, and mock-up stages, I made a prototype in Figma.

Test

Usability Testing (UT)

Tinder users communicate with the matched partner(s) by chat (sending text) or video call. The chat feature is very basic and less efficient since the user cannot reply to the conversation based on the chat bubble which sometimes causes a misunderstanding. Besides that, although they can make a video call, the essential feature such as sending pictures is currently unavailable (based on the start time of the study case).

This UT is conducted to:

understand easy of use user when using undo swipe feature (rewind) so the user can return to the previous match, and
understand easy of use and efficient user when using chat features (reply based on a chat bubble, send a picture, quick reaction to the chat, unsent chat, and delete chat that is no longer in contact) so user can have better communication with their matched partner.

So in the end, the desire of non-premium users to become premium plan subscribers will be increased.

You can see the more complete Usability Testing (UT) report here.

Scenario

UNDO THE SWIPE/ REWIND FEATURE

Swipe the page to find a good match, then rewind/ undo the swipe and go back to the previous user profile

CHAT FEATURES

Give a quick funny reaction to matched partner’s latest chat (new proposed)
Reply to matched partner’s latest chat based on bubble chat (new proposed)
Share a picture from the phone gallery (new proposed)
Unsent the wrong message of the chat (new proposed)
Delete the chat room with a user that is no longer in contact

Summary Insight

After asking some questions and asking users to perform the Usability Test (UT) all users agree that the newly developed design is better because for some reasons

the icons used are easy to understand by the users
some features were added to make the chatting experience more efficient, especially the reply based on the bubble chat and send picture feature
Overall, all the new proposed features are needed and only need a little improvement to make the experience better

Design Recommendation

Things I’ve Learned

Through this project, I learn how conducting end-to-end processes from UX research to UX design is not easy, but worth it for my future career. There is still a lot of improvement needed. Therefore, any comment is appreciated and will be used for future learning, and kindly give a clap if you find this writing interesting (ps: you can give up to 50 claps by holding the clap button for a few seconds).

Thank you for reading!

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