TLDR: WATCH THE VIDEO (click above)
Yep, it’s Valentine’s week again. So in the spirit of Cupid’s arrow, this week's teardown is aimed not just at Hinge, but also at all you singles. Dating is hard. But there are ways to hack the system—if you know the research.
Let’s look at how:
1. Fish from a bigger pond. 🎣
Most singles unintentionally limit their choices. Bumble's data on height preferences is a startling example. For men under 6 feet, this means significantly fewer women viewing their profiles because the onboarding flow lets women exclude them. About 90% of women could be chasing just 6% of men!
Hinge has a nice solve for this. They tuck away height filters under a premium feature, which means the average user’s search will be broader.
2. Looks don’t matter for long-term happiness 👀
Looks fade, but a study of MBAs shows that personality can actually become more—or conversely, less—attractive over time. This suggests that you should give a chance to connections that may not initially dazzle you visually, but could resonate on a deeper level.
The researchers in this study said, ‘spending more time with a person can very well change the way you see them.’ Nearly 40 percent of the couples in the study were friends for months before things turned romantic. And, looks didn’t affect satisfaction. The level of physical match on attraction didn’t have much impact on relationship satisfaction for men or women involved in the study.
If this is true, why limit your dating pool to the Catalinas of the world? (Watch the teardown for details on this mystery woman). Catalinas won’t make you happier on day 721 of the relationship.
👉 Like my friend Logan Ury says, go for the life partner, not the prom date.
3. Throw more darts (looking at you, ladies) 🎯
Men and women online daters behave differently. In one study, men viewed three times more profiles and were around 40% more likely to start a convo than women. The average man sent 3.2 times more first contact messages. The takeaway for women: send more DMs. Product leaders from Match told me on my Science of Change podcast that this is the number one thing women can do on these platforms. You heard them. 📧
Curious to know tips 4 and 5? Tune into the teardown :)
How can behavioral design help?
If you were Hinge’s product manager or designer, how could you help ladies fire off more messages? One strategy would be to visually cue users to initiate conversations by showing empty chat bubbles on the message page. 🗯️
Example from Irrational Labs: our team once did an experiment for a small business app (not dating!) aimed at increasing engagement with a profile. The control condition just told people to ‘add up to 10 content items here’. The winning condition showed 10 empty content blocks. This likely helped people see what they had to do and get motivated to start adding content. 💬
Next week, we'll switch gears from romance to another vital aspect of well-being: increasing savings (spoiler: it might be a popular payroll provider).
See you then for more insights and strategies. 👋
P.S. Enjoyed reading this? I recommend Logan’s book “How to Not Die Alone”. 💖
Have a friend who would enjoy these teardowns? Click the button below to refer them (& earn some great rewards)👇
Questions about your product? Email kristen@irrationallabs.com.
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