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by ajakate 772 days ago
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.

3 comments

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