Could a dating app for Piedmont students be beneficial? Carter Ballstadt and Cameron Earls think it might be a good idea.

The two business students presented their research, “Solving the Dating Problem” at this year’s Piedmont symposium.

“I think the preferences are a big thing when it comes to matchmaking, and if you don’t prefer something you won’t enjoy it when dating,” said Carter Ballstadt.

Ballstadt, like any person, has a preference on who he dates. Many dating apps don’t let users choose a preference of the traits they like about a person. That’s why these two students proposed a Piedmont dating app to match students who have things in common.

“We used a decomposition and abstraction to create an algorithm over them to increase the matches between the students here,” said Cameron Earls.

They used preferences for the decomposition, for example what genders you’re interested in, age and the age range you’re interested in. For the abstraction they used the amount of effort you put into a relationship. The preferences are what you prefer and what you enjoy doing, like your hobbies and interests. 

Other dating apps like Tinder use algorithms by collecting data from each user and mainly focus on their quantity of matches. With the Piedmont dating app, they would focus more on quality of the match, so you could have a longer and lasting relationship. 

“We would have a free setup for the app, as well as a premium account which would cost a little extra,” said Earls.

Like any other app they offer a free account which you can use to get matches, but you don’t get everything offered on the app. They would have other features on the app that would cost some money to get it extra. 

“What you look for in someone with free time and what they’re doing in life is very important,” said Ballstadt, adding that their target audience is for people looking for quality relationships, rather than simply several matches.

“They did a good job, and I thought their idea was very interesting,” said Kim Lovell, professor of business.