BACKGROUND

Now more than ever, people of all ages, are attracted to the allure that dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble bring. Tinder and Bumble are known as swiping-based dating apps (SBDAs) due to their simple and user-friendly design. One of the big inspirations behind our project derived from a TEDx Talk done by Violet Lim. In Lim's piece titled, What Dating Apps and Algorithms Don't Tell You, she explores apps' design and how users interact with it. At the start, our group talked a lot about social media, which consequently led to the discussion on how it makes the development of interpersonal relationships online so much easier. With that in mind, our conversation led to dating apps, namely Tinder and Bumble, and how some of us, ourselves, along with friends and peers have experienced online dating. Online dating is such a nuanced topic, and there was infinite directions we could have taken this research, but we decided we were most interested in how users interact and make snap-judgment decisions within seconds.

WHAT INSPIRED YOUR GROUP TO CHOOSE THIS TOPIC?

WHY IS THIS TOPIC IMPORTANT?

The relationship between intuition and attraction is a relevant one, especially in the tech-saturated world that we live in. Dating apps merely scratch the surface as to why we should care about how the two intersect. In the realm of dating apps, intuition and attraction are actively making those snap judgments for us, and knowing how they work together will allow us to understand why we make the choices that we do. To connect it to the current state of the world, racial prejudice exists widely on dating apps for a variety of reasons such as the out-dated stigma that surrounds interracial relationships or blurring the difference between attraction and fetishization of BIPOC.

Intuition and attraction go beyond just dating apps, it can be applied to eCommerce markers and social media platforms. If business owners understand how a potential customer's intuition works hand in hand with attraction, they will be better able to tailor advertisements that are more likely to capture their attention. In the case of social media platforms, app developers can use the content of our research to understand what aspects of an app retain its users to ensure that they continue coming back.