Hive Five: Group meetups for Bumble BFF

The brief: turn a nearby like into an upgrade

The course brief cast me as the designer on a Bumble customer-acquisition team. Free users rarely have a “now” reason to upgrade. A like from someone close by was meant to be that reason: high intent, relevant, and spontaneous, with Premium revealing who it was. The target was 12% of exposed free users upgrading within seven days, with guardrails on blocks, reports, and location opt-outs. The design had to cover mobile, desktop and watch.

The brief also came with a dataset: conversion, retention and adoption figures for two location features, Proximity Alert and Map Integration, split by Bumble’s three modes. It was course-provided, not real Bumble data, but it was the evidence I had, so I started there.

Friends mode converted best

I had assumed dating would convert best and planned to design there. Friends mode led both experiments instead. It was the lowest-risk, highest-confidence place to introduce a paid feature, so I moved the whole project to Bumble BFF.

Why I didn’t build it

Walking through realistic scenarios broke the idea. The brief said nothing about what happens when the nudge arrives while you are in a meeting or on an errand and can’t get away, and every such case needed its own screen. Showing live locations in a friends product also raised exactly the safety stakes the brief warned about.

There was also a problem the alert couldn’t solve. AI-assisted desk research on BFF complaints and my own experience with social apps pointed to the same pattern: matches rarely turn into plans, and most conversations fade out. What was missing was a concrete plan; distance mattered less.

From Hangouts to a table for five

After dropping the nearby-friends map, I explored BFF Hangouts: user-hosted meetups for 2–8 people. I then moved to an app-arranged table for you and four strangers. “Sell the seat, not the signal” became the principle at the same time.

The first home screen below was AI-generated before the first critique. Its generic patterns and heavy gradients stood out. I then kept AI for small components and redesigned the screens by studying Bumble’s app.

The home page lists events, with nothing to swipe

Hive Five lives in the People tab. The home page is a list of this week’s events in your city, each with a type, a date and a time: Dinner, Night Run, Coffee Chat, Drinks, Hike, Brunch. There are no cards to swipe and nobody to rate; you just pick an evening.

The same page carries your commitments. Once you book, “You’re in!” sits above the list with the date and neighborhood; after the event it moves to “Past Event”, where the group is waiting.

Booking takes three answers

Signing up asks only what the matching needs: which part of the city, which languages you are happy to speak and what you would spend; dietary restrictions are optional. A review step shows the summary before you confirm, and the confirmation is a single screen: “You’re all booked!”, with the date, the time and the neighborhood. The venue and the group come later.

Free to browse, premium to sit down

Free users meet Hive Five as a card in My groups and can read what it is. The paywall appears at the point of highest intent, when they want a seat: a monthly plan with a seven-day trial for unlimited sessions and priority matching, or a one-time session for a single event, so the first dinner doesn’t require a subscription. A short welcome sets the tone before the first booking: “Take a chance, relax, and just say, Hello stranger.”

An event page that changes with time

One event page carries the whole lifecycle. Before the event, a banner counts down (“Starts in 4 days and 7 hours”, then “Starts in 1 day”). Three days out, the restaurant unlocks, along with a sketch of the group: its industries, schools and nationalities, but not who they are. During the event the banner reads “Ongoing event”. Afterwards it reads “This event has passed”, and the people appear.

Two dialogs do the guarding. Cancelling is allowed, but the page says plainly that you lose your spot. Tapping the participants early gets a “not yet”: for privacy and safety, who else is coming is only shown after the event. Say hi after dinner.

After the night, a way to stay in touch

Once the event has passed, the page shows who was at the table. Tap any participant to see their profile: a photo, a short bio, their interests and the groups they belong to. A message button on the profile lets you keep talking with people you have already met.

The same profile also lets you report or block someone. Meeting in person first already lowers the risk, and these safety controls cover the rest.

Notifications that follow the plan

The brief was about notifications, and Hive Five still needs them, but each one is tied to a step of the plan rather than to someone’s location. A confirmation says the restaurant has been booked. A Live Activity on the lock screen keeps the venue and the time in view while the event is on. Afterwards, one message says the profiles are unlocked.

Android, and a deliberate no to desktop

The Android version keeps the same design and adapts only what the platform changes: device sizes and the status bar.

The brief asked for desktop too, and I decided against it. BFF has no web product, and the feature depends on phone capabilities such as instant notifications. What the web does have is a marketing page for BFF, so I added a Hive Five entry to its Friends tab: a short pitch and a QR code that opens the feature in the app.

What I learned

The concept was reviewed in two rounds of peer critique and presented at the end of February. It was not tested with BFF users, so what I can claim is the reasoning, not the results. The next step would be to test the sign-up and the hidden-participants rule with real BFF users, then A/B the paywall framing.