Date: 07 Jan, 2022
Swiping, when introduced by Tinder in 2012 was a great UI/UX revolution in the world of dating. It changed the core language of dating from better matchmaking algorithms to better swiping choices. It unleashed what can be called a mass popularization of dating as well as a default user behavior. Before Tinder, people were just looking for long-term partners but after swiping feature, people were looking for a good-looking partner with LTR (long-term relationship) as a distant/incidental goal. That is when appearances became dominant over real attributes of the dating partners. It is not accidental that Tinder ushered in a phenomenon that can be termed equivalent of “Uber for sex”. This was game changing for dating industry. No wonder, Tinder app has seen nearly 400 million downloads, 75 million active users and nearly 8 million paid users. No doubt, it is the largest dating platform in the world right now available in nearly 190 countries and over 40 languages.
Now, the issue is whether this UI/UX revolution has outlived its potential. If not, why it is still the most recurring dating behavior by the most of dating app users. The answer is deeply comforting as well as troublesome. When one swipes left on somebody, this is a deep recognition of human choice, the choice for a partner. Though it is a market making practice by Tinder yet it invokes very powerful emotional alignment on the part of users. For females, this is extra rewarding because they have never got such a huge choice in the history of monogamy ever in the last 10,000 years if we leave royal class out of this thing. In those terms, swiping is an acceptance of a change that is now permanent for humans and particularly females. It means that choice and swiping are synonymous now.
However, having too much choice is not empowering rather it can be confusing. Dating fatigue is what comes out of this glut of choices. An average-looking man would get a date on Tinder after nearly 10,000 swipes and a female may get a date on far lower swipes but the percentage of long-term relationships is very low for them too. Swiping is for a purpose; it is not the goal itself. That is why choices need to be replaced with a “choice architecture” as coined by Richard Thaler, a Noble-prize winning behavioral economist. One should be able to swipe left but the context of the swipe should be clarified. If one swipes left and still gets better or apparently-better choices, users will never stop swiping. That is why too much swiping left should have a cost or a risk. That means a user should be given a choice architecture, a matrix of trade-off factors. Gaining on one factor may lead to losing on the other. That is why a user should swipe left but at one own’s risk.
How to design the choice architecture? This is a trillion-dollar question for dating industry because all social networks are hidden dating networks too. One platform may focus on compatibility of the partners while the other may focus on the alignment of real-time choices. There are million ways of doing that. One can use AI (artificial intelligence) for that or one may use better UI/UX for that. One may use a rewarding system or a punishing one too for that. Whatever be the innovative model for the choice architecture, swiping left will not go out of the users’ favorite choice. However, swiping itself would undergo a lot of change in near future. That is what future of dating would built around.