Hinge

Introduction

Hinge is a location-based mobile dating application with a freemium model that enables users to scroll through other users’ profiles and send them a ‘like’ to let other users know they would like to ‘match’ with them. Hinge has coined itself as “the relationship app” and has advertised the application as “designed to be deleted.” Hinge uses eight design principles that are meant to support genuine interaction between users, such as requiring users to answer three prompts to add to their profile, encouraging users to share their religion and political affiliation, and only allowing free users to send ten likes per day. Asking users to share personal information such as their political views, religious beliefs, and education is meant to help better connect users with good matches. However, with this increase in personal information shared comes a cost; users put themselves at risk for privacy breaches with sensitive information.