The first step was to understand if my observation was a real problem. So, I searched for researches and articles about relationship apps addiction and swiping usage.

There are some very interesting contents: “Swiping for trouble”, published by the Journal of Social and Personal Relationship, shows the users’ problem of setting limits on the time spent using swiping; another example is the article “The Psychology of Swiping in Apps”, published by App Partner agency, that comments that even “negative” swipings bring positive reward to users because they believe they are closer of a positive answer.

Social psychologist Jeanette Purvis wrote in her thesis: “Tinder’s interface is perfectly constructed to encourage this rapid swiping. It’s the same reward system used in slot machines”. This is due to two main facts: the repetitive use of only a single thumb, a technique studied by Hobber in Designing Mobile Interfaces; and centralizing focus on only one action at a time, going against the concept of choice paralysis.

The proposal was to keep the same familiar user interface. Just exchanging “people” for other subjects. And in a technical conversation with two developers, we found public APIs with copyleft images.

After that the hardest time of the whole project came: talk to my girlfriend to let me download Tinder to do the Benchmark.

After conducting quick “interviews” with Tinder users, I mapped the main navigation flow and created a simple onboarding process. The idea was to refer to dating apps so there was no need to create lo-fi wireframes. The benchmark was the basis of everything.

I developed a small style guide with a symbol library in Sketch. And I created the first version of the main screens. I tested the first version with the same users from the interview. After the feedback, I expanded the prototype and noticed the need to use Flinto and the Principle app, more developed prototyping tools, to simulate swiping.