It’s a proposal: Dating apps for singles, by singles
L-R: Jasmine Tan, 24, sales executive, Kevin Go, 23, system developer, and Amilyn Quah, 27, financial adviser, took the first prize with their mobile dating app idea TableAround, at the dating hackathon organised by Social Development Network. Photo: Robin Choo
SINGAPORE — In a bid to get more singles to connect with each other and hopefully find a marriage partner, the Social Development Network (SDN) organised a dating hackathon to crowdsource creative digital solutions so that people may meet and spend time with one another.
The event by the Government’s resource centre for dating information and services was held over three separate days in December, and it saw 10 teams consisting of tertiary students and working professionals coming together to brainstorm ideas.
They presented their proposals today (Dec 11) for judging, and a mobile application called TableAround came up tops.
The idea for the app is to bring together like-minded people so that they may be invited to group dinners.
After the dinner, they leave feedback for those who attended, to help the team gather data on how to group those with similar interests.
The winning team of four behind the app – consisting of sales executive Jasmine Tan, 24, systems developer Kevin Go, 23, financial advisor Amilyn Quah, 27, and Mr Gin Low, 31, who is in the marketing line – developed it from the “simple idea” of meeting new people over dinner.
“We wanted to make it easy – it’s just a dinner, you just have to show up and make new friends,” Ms Tan said.
The team is also positioning their idea as a social app instead of a dating app to avoid the stigma that its users are not “cool” or are desperate to find love.
The app that won second prize, Tunnel of Love, gets users to meet each other through ice-breakers and relationship-building games. It also allows them to achieve relationship “milestones” through the app, such as when they are going on a second date or a movie date.
National University of Singapore undergraduate Nathaniel Yim, 23, who is one of the two in the team, said the idea came from their personal experiences and problems they faced during the dating process.
For instance, Mr Yim sometimes wondered what he should do on the second date, among other things. “We wanted to come up with some solutions for others who were going through the same situation,” he added.
For the third prize, it was an app called Dimer, which allows interested parties to make an in-app call to get to know each other.
The teams taking part may choose to propose an innovative mobile app for singles to meet like-minded singles of the opposite sex, or devise a communications plan to mitigate the stigma of using dating services, or develop a web-based programme to help singles learn about themselves.
They were then judged on the suitability, uniqueness, feasibility of their solution, among others.
Other ideas for the hackathon included mobile apps that get users to chat with others for at least two minutes before they reveal the photo of the other party, or one that matches users who are interested in attending similar events.
The top three winning teams walked away with cash prizes of $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 respectively. They also have a chance to partner a matchmaking agency accredited by SDN and to receive seed funding of up to $50,000 to further develop their app ideas.
