What’s a single girl to do these days? Meals for one are less exciting and who the hell wants to make a recipe and eat it for the next three days straight?
OK hear me out…
My girlfriends and I were having our usual Monday check-in over lunch and Yes I am totally living vicariously through my single girlfriends and their Tinder escapades.
After a Tinder marathon over the weekend one of my friends said that it was so much work and that she really needs to take a break from it. We also talked about another friends’ recent experience on Plenty of Fish. Both of my girlfriends were tired of the online dating scene.
As we sat and ate our lunches one of my girlfriends poked at her curry and said “You know I have eaten this same thing for a few days and I am beginning to get sick of it. It is so uninspiring to cook on your own for one person.”
My other girlfriend agreed and added her issue with the rising cost of groceries these days. One thing led to another and I don’t know how I got there but I blurted out.
“Imagine if we could do Tinder for food exchanges!”
I said- “Think about it- you could meet up with others who were close to you and exchange lunches. That way you could always have something new and exciting and you could divvy up the large recipes you make at the beginning of the week and not have to eat the same thing for three days.”
My girlfriends laughed and added, “Yeah you could swipe right for pasta and left if you have already eaten curry that week.”
After I got home I began to wonder if this idea already existed. Apparently it does- sort of. The app’s name is Foodie and was created John Kim and Jeonguk Lee as part of the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 hackathon. In this article the creators of Foodie explain the purpose of the app and why it is a culmination of other foodie apps but capitalizes on real time information and crowdsourcing for better user experiences.
We want to know where other people are around the location and then be able to give them what’s hot now. That’s something Yelp doesn’t do; it shows you what was hot before, but it doesn’t show what’s trending now based on the weather. If it’s super hot, ice cream could be trending, for example.
In reviewing more information about Tech Crunch as a company and this whole concept of a sponsored hackathon I started to think a bit more about affordances of Tinder and what would be kept and what should be hacked with it to make this a more functional app for my idea.
After a bit more digging I found a recipe app called Tender that allows users to swipe right for photos of food they find appealing and in doing this the recipes are instantly saved to their cookbook. I kind of like this idea as well and this affordance could be linked to others that would allow users to build networks with other solo lunch makers in order to share recipes, plan meet-ups for food exchanges and who knows what else is on the menu….
Much like the leftovers in our fridge and meals we are trying to stretch our dollar to make we have to get creative sometimes. Some of the best recipes I created are born out of being out of one ingredient so I have to improvise to make a dish. I see this philosophy extending to social platforms as well. So maybe Tinder is not doing it for you in the world of dating. All may not be lost if you look at the affordances that work for you and amalgamate it with the affordances of other apps that serve your needs.
Dean
February 1, 2016 — 2:45 pm
Now that’s a good idea! I like the idea of communing over food and not the idea of romance right off the bat. Any library tie-in do you think? Dean
amybae
February 1, 2016 — 3:54 pm
I think the tie-in could be looking at the organization of space and use of space in libraries. If one of the goals is to make the library a more social space where students want to be perhaps we should consider what makes them want to stay. I would be interested in looking food policies in libraries and why the shift was made to loosen the rules in some libraries. Maybe one way to make the meet-up aspect of this app safer could be for the library to support this exchange and offer a space within the building to do so.
sarah haigh
February 6, 2016 — 7:50 pm
I realize that this post is mostly about a very cool idea regarding foodsharing for singles, but I also wanted to weigh in on the online dating phenomenon. The comedian Aziz Ansari wrote a very interesting book called Modern Romance all about dating in the 21st century and I definitely think it is worth a read for your single girlfriends if they haven’t already. I was a bit sceptical, because I thought it would just be all jokes (it is written by a comedian after all), but it’s actually more of a social anthropological look at how dating has changed from previous generations and the affect this is having on young people.
amybae
February 17, 2016 — 9:17 pm
Hey Sarah
Thanks so much for the recommended reading. I will definitely share this with my girlfriends!!
ean
March 15, 2016 — 6:06 pm
Modern Romance was great! Seconded for sure.
Nick
February 17, 2016 — 1:25 pm
Something like the Tinder affordances could stretch beyond the realm of food with regards to libraries, and people could swipe left and right on things like groups events, collaborative writing experiments, maker projects, etc… I’ve never really thought of how Tinder affordances could be used beyond dating, but this was an interesting and eye opening post!
amybae
February 17, 2016 — 9:19 pm
Hi Nick
Thanks for your comment. I was also wondering about maker spaces in libraries as a connection point. As librarians I think it is important to connect with the technologies and languages that are within the realm of our users. Who knows by the time I graduate Tinder could be a dinosaur hahahahah!
Jocelyn
February 18, 2016 — 8:45 pm
Great post 🙂 Maybe libraries could use a tinder-like app for book recommendations? Like in your food app, swiping right could save a book title and even its call number, and maybe your saved titles could even link to your library profile so that you could place any of these books on hold.
To make it more social, the app could connect to others who use the app, and reading lists could be created the same way playlists are created in 8tracks (an online music streaming site that contains user-generated playlists).
amybae
February 19, 2016 — 8:26 am
Hi Jocelyn
I like this idea!
One of Morgan’s favourite app’s Shelfari that she blogged about could be provide the aesthetic for this idea and the affordances that Tinder does well such as it’s ability to draw on the large network of users could be combined. In case others want to check out Morgan’s blog post about Shelfari: https://librarianismblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/a-love-letter-to-shelfari/
Maybe it is time for Tinder to join the mix in this community. Could be a way to up the game and move away from some of the less desirable affordances they had from the past.
jenna dufour
February 18, 2016 — 9:25 am
Really interesting concept. Sort of a micro potluck between 2 people 🙂
amybae
February 19, 2016 — 8:13 am
Thanks Jenna:)