User Interface

While both Tinder and Bumble share very similar designs and thus have similar flows and behavioral nudges resulting from their user interfaces, the subtle differences between them can highlight how certain aspects of user experience affect users and thus create gendered experiences. Professor Navarro at the University of California, Irvine noted a famous guideline for designing user interfaces during her Introduction to Software Engineering class: Jakob Nielsen’s 10 heuristics. Out of the ten heuristics, those that are important to this discussion are minimalist design, user control and freedom, and helping users recognize and recover from errors. First of all, minimalist design and short bios encourages the fast-paced swiping and matching system that the designers of both Tinder and Bumble are looking for. This actually goes hand-in-hand with their philosophy on user control and freedom. Both apps are extremely locked down; there is no searching for specific users, and the details of the matchmaking algorithm is entirely hidden. This ends up emphasizing what is on a user’s profile, despite the length restrictions and picture quantity restrictions. Out of those we interviewed, it seemed that females, who are rarer and thus more in demand on the apps, put less thought into their profiles. In contrast, a non-binary and a disabled interviewee both mentioned how, despite certain struggles of discrimination on the two apps, these short bios allow them to express themselves; it can be an extremely empowering feeling to be very open on a profile. An aspect of freedom that differs between the two applications is Bumble’s preference for females to message male users first upon a match. On Tinder, either user is free to message the other first after a match is detected. Bumble specifically limits this; despite violating a heuristic in a way, this is obviously an intentional design. Additionally, Bumble offers a variety of prompts for users to answer and place on their profile, while Tinder severely limits the length of a user bio. Some interviewees and users found discussing their experiences online mentioned how this creates a different culture between the two applications. First of all, there has been a view circulating that Tinder is primarily designed for “hookup culture,” where users can meet up casually without strings attached. In comparison, many noted that Bumble seems much more geared towards serious relationships. Females specifically noted that they can feel more desired and empowered on Bumble, as they can be picky about who they end up messaging, giving them an aspect of user control and freedom within that application. This small limitation in the user experience of Bumble has cultivated an entirely different culture surrounding the app. The premium features of both applications have also led to differing gendered experiences. Tinder has Tinder Gold, a subscription that offers features such as extra-powerful swipes, error prevention in undoing a swipe (which is also one of Nielsen’s heuristics), and other miscellaneous quality-of-life features, including monthly “spotlights” in which your profile has increased visibility. Bumble offers Bumble Boost, which allows for similar error prevention and other quality-of-life features, although their equivalent of extra-powerful swipes and spotlights are paid per use. Online opinions seem to point towards these features being geared towards male users, who dominate the apps’ population. Both premium swipe options are taking advantage of a kind of “digital nudge”: the scarcity effect (Schneider, et al). In the article, “Digital nudging: guidaning online user choices through interface design,” this effect is simply described as, the “[tendency] to perceive scarce items as more attractive or desirable,” (Schneider, et al). Because these premium likes are seen as being scarce, those who they are used on can be led to interact with certain users. Some females from an online forum search even revealed that, because of their popularity on the apps, they only choose to speak with those that end up using some form of premium attention-getting feature on either app. While this is clearly a business decision to encourage less successful users to spend money and more successful (and likely attractive) users to continue interacting with users on the apps, gendered expectations and experiences are clearly being changed because of these designs. Decisions while using an app are not created in a vacuum, it “is almost always influenced by heuristics and biases,” and thus “digital nudging works by either modifying what is presented-the content of a choice—or how it is presented—the visualization of a choice,” (Schneider, et al). The fancy designs and color choices made for premium features entice both those buying them and those who are receiving them.

In addition to aesthetic design choices for the user interfaces, there can be algorithmic design choices as well. In their paper, “Constructing a Desiring User: Discourse, Rurality, and Design in Location-Based Social Networks,” Jean Hardy and Silvia Lindtner mention how Grindr and SCRUFF, “location-based networking applications for gay, bisexual, and queer men,” have caused issues because of this core design. Both apps were designed around a central feature shared by Bumble and Tinder: the use of a radius to determine what users are shown to another. These radii don’t necessarily reflect upon gender identities, but can drastically alter how certain users can use the services, despite being a seemingly simple idea. Urban users can generally find a bigger variety of people, but local geography (such as the Great Lakes) can cause the feature to be largely useless; who cares how close a user is in a straight line if there are no roads conveniently connecting the two (Hardy, Lindtner)? Minute differences between the flow of apps, such as females being able to choose to go first and differences in profile creation or poor decision-making in programming distance-based radii, can lead to unique digital cultures and community tendencies within the apps.