Comment by ajakate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajakate | Hacker News Reader

I downloaded the app, but running into an infinite spinner on the main "Artists" tab, so can't really comment on the what the app is like...

What I will say is that it seems a little unfortunate that so many "matching" apps take the tinder swipe model these days when it really makes the matching experience worse.

I have a friend who's a drummer in central Illinois. He's used https://www.bandmix.com to find multiple groups that he's been jamming with for a while now. The UI is such that you can see a grid of all the bands/artists matching your criteria, and can facet and filter your search in the sidebar with a lot of other options including distance, commitment level, genre, etc.

Thanks for checking it out. Ugh, I thought I had fixed the infinite spin, but it seems to happen on the first app open occasionally still - its related to permissions dialog

I intend to add filtering, but didn't initially because 0 people use it currently, and also wanted to get an mvp out quickly

By swiping you force people to ‘rate’ everyone they see. You can then use a method like the Elo rating system to match musicians of similar skill levels (or desirability?) more easily.

Why does swiping make it worse? Is there a better alternative?

Why not just list everyone... tables and filters for the end user

You give up on a lot of data you could otherwise have collected by doing that, data which could have helped the product in other ways.

Filters are useful to narrow a list but they're useless for actually recording a decision against each item in the set. They're just not a mechanic for assigning a (boolean) value. Swiping is, and that's what's happening here.

The swipe feature, while familiar to users, may not be the most efficient way for musicians to connect and form bands. A UX that allows creating a band and receive applications could prove more effective, then perhaps you can use the swipe to accept or reject them into your band.

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