I don’t know how many of you are using Tinder or other kinds of dating apps, considering how risky can it get to have a simple hook up during these challenging times. However, in this article, I would like to bring up this company’s innovation as a case for bringing interactivity to the media platforms.
After this whole pandemic hit, many things became digitalised; tech companies and social platforms began to seek for new ways of making our experience and at least have the feeling of taking control of our own decisions. However, the concept of “user experience” or “customer experience” is not very new as companies were already trying to bring up some interactivity into the game. I feel like it just became a bit more obvious.
I don’t know if you have watched Bandersnatch, an interactive Black Mirror episode, but I remember how exciting it was. I remember thinking about how creative it is to add interactive components into the episode and let the viewer built a story. You suddenly left your passive role as a viewer and became an active member of this production.
When I see Tinder’s game called “Swipe Night”, I thought about Bandersnatch since you don’t passively consume the media but also put your own decisions in work. It is an interactive story where the users decide by swiping and at the end, you see the people who made the same decisions as you. Therefore, you don’t only swipe left or right based on people’s physical characteristics, but also you see what did they chose to do in an apocalypse scenario. This new function brought some spice into the dating app, and if we consider the fact that swiping rates had risen significantly, Tinder made a successful initiative.
This case brings another question: why have we hyped up about interactivity so much? Are we bored of only consuming the media and now want to experience more? I would say partly yes. Ok, many of us are not passive consumers as create some content from time to time (posting pictures, commenting on posts etc.), considering the place the user-generated-content had come. However, we not that responsible for our decisions, and we are still living in this social media bubble (remember the Social Dilemma) which makes us a bit passive, increasing our tendency to seek some more experience.
I feel like Tinder’s new feature was very smart in terms of making us more active in the process and providing something fun into the dating world, just like how Netflix’s Bandersnatch did for increasing the interactivity and putting a different perspective into the filmmaking practice.
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