Looking for love? You might want to try Divvy.
A new website, Serendivvity, took Divvy data and turned it into a bike rider’s dating paradise.
The website, named one of the winners in the bike-sharing program’s Divvy Data Challenge, allows you to explore Divvy stations based on your romantic interest and neighborhood.
“Serendivvity was built to help Divvy enthusiasts find partners for the long ride of life,” according to the website description. “We use ridership data to help you find the best time to meet other riders at your local stations.”
The Divvy Data Challenge, launched in partnership with 1871, asked Chicagoans to analyze the program’s 2013 data and present it in a visually compelling way.
That’s how Alex Killough, Sabella Flagg, Craig Clark, Stephen Menton and Theresa Stewart, who work at Chicago-based innovation consultancy Gravitytank, came up with the idea for Serendivvity, which they designed in a matter of three weeks.
The website uses data to help those looking for love by allowing users to select a gender and location, then provides them with a list of stations with “the highest amount of connections and the best time to go to a station.”
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“Now is the time for you to get offline and share a moment with someone new. And you know you have Divvy in common, so there’s that, right?” the website states.
But the group said the site wasn't necessarily intended to be for dating, but rather to showcase gender imbalances at Divvy stations in a humorous way.
"If people happen to have a date too that's great, we certainly encourage love, but the idea was what we can do with the data and highlight an issue without being too heavy about it," said Killough.
Other “practical uses” of Serendivvity, according to the site, include using areas with a gender imbalance to address possible issues with a station, such as lack of proper lighting or proximity to a higher crime area. Existing local businesses can also use that data to better understand their Divvy customer base, and new businesses may scout locations to match their service offerings.
"People have said that they want it to be a real thing to use," said Stewart. "I'm sort of really floored with where we ended up and how it works."
And while the site may be used for finding love, It’s not the first Divvy dating project to hit the streets of Chicago.
Last summer, Divvy teamed up with Chicago dating company Project Fixup to help set singles up on bike dates.
