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A Usability Evaluation of Tinder & Badoo
A usability evaluation of two popular dating services
Project background
This project focused on usability testing of two online dating services called Tinder and Badoo. The main idea of this project was to learn about different evaluation methods and improve the usability. This project was part of a course called 'Evaluation methods' at Stockholm University.
Tinder and Badoo are two online dating apps that make it easier for single people to date and connect. These services allow the user to swipe like or dislike on other people's profiles to find a match. A profile usually contains photos, a short bio, and a list of personal interests.
My group and I wanted to identify potential problems with the design to improve the usability of the service. We also wanted to compare the two dating services with each other to see if there were any usability problems with either one.
Goals
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To investigate if these online dating services fulfill their purposes of making online dating easy and accessible.
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To see if the participants could easily reach their goals while navigating through the interface.
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To create mockups of usability improvements.
My role
Workshop Facilitation, Research, Visual design
Team size
3 people
Tools
Pen, Paper, Figma
Timeline
3 weeks
Usability testing flow
Usability testing: flow of information
The findings showed that the majority of participants from the Tinder group had a difficult time finding their settings to change the distance and age of potential matches. They also had a hard time finding the function where you swipe to like or dislike profiles. The fire icon (Tinders logo) was the swipe function, but this was not a clear choice for the participants. Even though the majority of the participants struggled with the interface, they all remembered it as an easy and positive experience in the questionnaire. This is contrary to how the in-person interaction played out.
The findings in the Badoo group showed that no participant had any struggles finding the settings or changing the distance and age. They neither had a problem finding the swipe function, which was an icon resembling two outlined playing cards. But the majority of participants had a difficult time changing the profile picture, which was not a problem among the Tinder participants. There were two different places where photos could be edited from. One only allowed the user to add photos and another that only allowed to edit them/delete them. The Badoo group didn’t struggle as much as the Tinder group did, but they had more torn feelings on how the interaction went in the questionnaire.
80% had a difficult time finding settings
(Tinder)
80% had a difficult time changing profile picture
(Badoo)
Process
The process began by defining the purpose of the study, how it was going to be conducted, what metrics we wanted to capture, and how many participants we wanted to include. We decided to do an in-person usability test, where the facilitator gave the participants a task to perform. This was combined with a method called Thinking Aloud, which allowed us to better understand our participant's thought processes. We also included two questionnaires, one that collected background information and another to capture their experience with the service. We had 10 participants taking part in the study, five for Tinder and five for Badoo.
We looked at the metrics: effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Effectiveness: to see if the user completes their goal, with a high degree of accuracy. Efficiency: to look at how fast the user can complete their goal and with how many steps (clicks). Satisfaction: to know if they perceived the service as engaging and aesthetically pleasing (Komninos, 2020).
Findings
Solution
The in-person usability test and the questionnaire were analyzed before we developed an improvement. We realized that participants had a hard time understanding certain icons in the Tinder app. They also had a difficult time comprehending what was clickable and not, due to the use of grey colors. This resulted in an improvement of icons in the top navigation bar and colors.
Though Badoo didn’t have the same usability problems, they still had issues concerning the placement of editing photos. The participants had a difficult time changing their own profile picture because there were two places in which they could do it. This resulted in one icon getting removed from the interface. This made it more clear and obvious where the profile picture could be changed and edited.
Hover over the image to see the improvements!
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