Bumble’s Head of Product Design to Join Twitter

“Her experience in design ethics, education and theory will be invaluable to Twitter,” said Joshua Harris, design director at Twitter.

Ms. Mendonça, 29, joined Bumble Inc. to work on product design in September 2019. She managed a team focused on developing the user interface and experience of the Bumble app, which is known for letting only women make the first move in heterosexual matches. Earlier in her career, Ms. Mendonça worked for Sky, the British broadcaster owned by Comcast Corp.

Born in Brazil, Ms. Mendonça is a proponent of designing inclusive products, a philosophy she said she developed from her experiences as a bisexual woman with ADHD, and those of her parents, who don’t speak English but lived for a time in the U.K.

“All those things made me more attuned to some things about product design that other people maybe don’t notice,” she said. “And in the realm of dating, I saw and learned a lot about emotional vulnerability.”

Bumble declined to comment on Ms. Mendonça’s departure and on her successor.

The company raised $2.2 billion in its IPO, with shares climbing 64% during the debut.

During Ms. Mendonça’s tenure, Bumble introduced a number of features designed to make dating safer, including one that allows daters to report users who have acted inappropriately even after their connection on the app has been severed.

Ms. Mendonça will bring her vulnerability theory of design to Twitter as it introduces new tools to tackle trolling. The company has been criticized for failing to protect some users from bullying and threats on its platform, an oversight that Co-founder and Chief Executive Jack Dorsey has acknowledged.

In recent years Twitter has ramped up the development of features designed to prevent trolling, including the demotion of post replies from accounts that exhibit signs of “troll-like behavior” and the ability to limit or turn off replies to specific tweets.

Last week Twitter rolled out a “prompts” feature, which is designed to encourage people to pause and reconsider a potentially harmful or offensive reply before they hit send. User tests showed the prompts reduced offensive replies, the company said, adding that it plans to continue exploring how the feature—and other forms of intervention—can encourage healthier conversations on the platform.

Ms. Mendonça said such moves encouraged her to join the company.

“I’m a Twitter user myself and I’ve definitely seen a huge shift in the design mind-set at Twitter,” she said. “They are thinking about innovative ways to solve problems in ways that I couldn’t find at other companies.”

Write to Katie Deighton at [email protected]