Why are dating apps so poorly designed?

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Seriously. I could use a few of these as case studies for what not to do when creating UI. The filters don't seem to make much difference if any depending on the app. Such as age, on 'Her' for example, I can set it to 20 to 24. However, I still get likes from 18 or even 30 year olds. When going through profiles, it still shows just about everyone regardless of age. I can set distance, but get likes from Germany. The User Interface is messy and not intuitive to use. I dislike the concept of tapping right or left at the border of the current photo displayed to flick through photos. That's just asking for someone to accidentally swipe on someone else without meaning to.

Further, it hides likes in one panel despite notifying the user each time they receive a like in another panel and directly telling them who liked them - so hiding the likes section under a paywall makes absolutely no sense in this context when the users already know who liked them. At least with Tinder the app hides the likes to begin with, so that actually makes sense.

After trying a couple of apps, I have noticed that a considerable amount have sloppy design choices. I mean, I understand it's just about getting the app out there and making profit at the end of day through advertising and premiums, but it's surprising what gets overlooked.

If the dating app is successful wouldn't that reduce the number of people using it?

I think you provided a very good answer of your own.

Who cares if anyone actually "hooks up", as long as the money keeps rolling in?

An unfortunate truth. Dating sites and apps work similarly to gambling. A few strike out, but many do not and continue to contribute to the system - which keeps it running. I know Hinge has a marketing campaign which focuses on the idea of 'being an app designed to be deleted'. However, I wasn't particularly impressed with their app either. I think many are aware of the slimy nature of dating apps, but hope to be the fortunate ones. Personally I know a few couples that met through apps.

Your settings affect what users you see, but doesn’t affect your visibility to other users.

Like for example, let’s say you are 25 years old and you put age range 20-30; you will see only users within this range. But if the other user who’s 18 and puts age range 18-30 he/she will still see you because your age falls still within their selected range even if you don’t want to see them back.

Making it a two-ways matchmaking is more complicated and expensive (performance and computing power wise), big and rich companies like facebook can do that but not small startups; to reach every time you click on “search people” or whatever the software’s backend will have to go through each matched (matched by your settings) user’s settings data in order to find out whether the two settings (yours and theirs) match and don’t conflict: it is not much if you have handful of users but if you get 10s of thousands of active users... it is gonna suck if you don’t scale your hosting servers.

It’s no longer just a simple query.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 24 Mar 2021, 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm lucky I lived in the days when the "personals" were in the newspaper. I met one woman through the "personals." She was a trip!

Even then, there's no guarantee that it will actually just show you that range - in the example in the original post, despite setting it to 20 - 24, it was showing users to me to swipe on that were 27. Users that had not liked me. Tinder does this as well sometimes - I received a notification once saying "We've decided to broaden your search!" which is just a nice way of saying "we've decided to ignore you!"

^ well that app is bugged then.

Or probably isn’t, but maybe you were not getting any profiles (or very few so not profitable) with your settings; so it shows your profiles as close as possible to your settings as a last resort, that would be better than showing you a blank page.

I met my current wife on a dating site.

Im the first and only person that she messaged.

I had set a distance filter of 20 miles. She hadnt set a distance having not noticed that section.

She lived over 200 miles away.

Last edited by Velorum on 24 Mar 2021, 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It is fairly buggy in general - it crashed a couple times just setting up my profile so I didn't have high hopes.



That was the case for Tinder. Plus people make some odd decisions - It's always important to read the bio because I see a lot of straight women using Tinder to make friends. They'll write in 'Straight woman' under gender and have something about wanting friends in their bio. I see plenty of straight men too but I'm not surprised. Personally I find it almost comical when I see a guy who writes something along the lines of "Why don't women like me?" but they'll have their settings set to 'woman seeking woman' yet have their gender as 'straight man'.

I was hoping Her would be a better app, but I am disappointed. Not surprised though. Maybe when I'm back in the city they'll be an increase in activity.

I find it very odd when people use *dating* apps to look for friends, like really?

Ethical hacker of almost 20 years over here ~

Not only can online dating put anyone or their personal information in danger, you shouldn't be judging everyone by cellphone pictures & bullet point information.

I'm really sad about this lowered standard of treatment for your friends & neighbors OK? Nothing personal, I just think it's a popular fad to make everyone's love lives impersonal.

Yeah, I can certainly understand this point of view. It has definitely become commercialised and dating apps aren't my favourite choice. Love and life in general is often unpredictable. With the state of things it is tempting to just give up and write a bunch of idealised romance for the sake of it. I am disappointed that I missed out on my final year of Uni due to covid.

Still, I'm only 21 and quite frankly, if the story of how my parents met has taught me anything, it's that a single moment can change a lot. If my dad hadn't listened to a random female co-worker about getting out more, he wouldn't have met my mum. Although it's possible they could've met later, since they cross paths several times after that but that's besides the point. He likely wouldn't have interacted if not for the co-worker.

I think the most disappointing aspect of reality is that there is no friend giving you harsh life advice and guiding you (usually). That you have to be your own friend. Your own catalyst. It's disappointing and sometimes a lot to process that the future isn't set and we have no real way of knowing what direction it is going. We can speculate based on what we know, but there are a lot of variables. You can act in certain ways to increase the chances of something happening, yet it isn't guaranteed.

Sometimes I do wish I were living in a romcom, because that offers certainty but it is a fantasy.

It's so good they just can't seem to stop dating. Obviously.

It feels pretty weird to be honest. Like I'm trying to create an idealized marketable image of myself to sell to others. I am basically commodifying myself for the social market. I'm a human being, I can't be boiled down to a handful of sentences and photos. Glad I'm not on the apps anymore, you get addicted to the swiping but don't actually meet people.