Dating algos
Timeline: May 2025
design and intent
audience profile
Boardible is a multiplayer board game platform, so it originally used 'UserTag' to link users in the same room. UserTag was a large pain point for users, so they gravitated toward familiar, industry-standard concepts like room codes and a ‘share’ feature. None of the users I interviewed could use the UserTag properly. Revising the user-to-user connection interface would be essential to increasing user conversion.
Education as something fun and self-paced
Who is the user and how do I represent them?
The Gale-Shapley Algorithm can be a little hard to grasp, with modern visualizations convoluted or overly technical. Wanting to meet my college-aged audience where they are meant fun UI (pixel art!) and the option to pace oneself. In UI terms, this meant lots of buttons — no shame in going back or forward here.
Since I wrote and designed the UI, I had to strike a balance between writing something concise (and attention-sustaining) but accurate. This meant eliminating overly complex matrix math or Big O notation, but leaving in pseudocode in the storyline.
My audience is non-technical dating app users of the ages 20-35 who are tech-curious and use technology often. My audience are stumblers upon this knowledge and stay intrigued by the project because of its relevance to their lives.
I chose this audience because though they are digitally literate, these users may lack the ability to understand existing resources about the algorithms behind these apps because of their non-technical background. Moreover, the topic was inspired by my friends, who fit this audience well.
When I designed, I used a more colloquial tone that builds from my experience interacting with these users. I also took inspiration from the graphics of data-driven publications like The Pudding, which shares a common user base with me. I also aimed to reduce the amount of information given on a single screen, and create various visualizations to explain the same thing.
I wanted to design something that felt youthful and dynamic. This is where I landed on pixel art and the storytelling style of The Pudding.
To further the relevance to my audience, I conducted 5 user interviews. I ended up making 30 screens!
Convey basic technical knowledge
Where I landed with these goals
Wireframes and prototypes I worked on to produce a hi-fi prototype of an explainer for the Gale-Shapley Algorithm for college students, for Northwestern's Communicating Computer Science class.
Information Architecture
Prototyping
Figma
