THE BLIND DATING EXPERIENCE

It was during the winter break of my first year in grad school. I came back to Lebanon for Christmas to spend time with my family and friends, but also to catch up on life, work on my portfolio and on life plans after my intense first semester. When I came back, I found myself taking part in this idea that we called "The List", where with 5 other girls, we started gathering names of our single friends, and trying to match them according to how well we knew them and their preferences, history, etc.

Our solution was to suppress the taboos and create more connections between people. With our 6 different yet similar circles of friends, we started this blind date matching system where we created a list of more than 60 of our single friends, then we would meet and discuss together how to find the best matches. Knowing personally both persons, we were able to come up with a decent description of the requirement what each of our friends would be looking for.

Once we decided on a match, we would call the person and ask if they would be up to meeting someone. It was always a direct no, but once we explained that there were no strings attached and all they had to do is show up at this place and have a drink with a person we think can fit them. Nothing to lose. We would take care of everything: choosing the location, making a reservation, asking them to split the bill equally, and to have at least 1 drink each. If by the end of the date they were not interested, they could just end it by saying goodbye. No strings attached. But if on the other hand they were interested by each other, they could exchange numbers or more.

This project ended up taking up a huge part of my break. I only noticed this when I was having a conversation about life with my professor Kit Parker; he made me realize that if I dedicated that much time to it, it must have been for a reason. The substrates of my project were people, links and relationships. There was a problem I was trying to solve, and he suggested I develop a map of the system illustrating the design problem. (Graphic work in progress)