Serendipity

Inspiration

We were inspired to flip the social media paradigm of follower counts, likes and engagement on its head, to create a platform where everyone is given an equal platform to present their ideas. This gave us a strong sense of the "old" internet where websites were niche and specific, and you never knew what you might find. Inspired by the old internet, we chose frutiger aero, the aesthetic of a utopian view of the internet and future, giving our app a vibrant and bubbly feel.

What it does

In an app where everyone follows everyone, instead of some posts rising to the surface, we use a dislike-only recommendation system which serves to push down posts which are distasteful or just poor writing. Otherwise recommendations are made based on freshness and underexposure, ensuring that everyone gets a chance to make their voice heard. Users can also unfollow anyone from the list of everyone, if there's anyone that they truly don’t want to hear from again.

How we built it

Our app prototype was built using Claude Code using an extensive design document based on our initial discussion of ideas around the app's concept, algorithm, aesthetic, purpose and technical components.

Challenges we ran into

How to design a recommendation algorithm that goes against existing implementations to dissuade popularity, while still presenting the user with suitable content. We settled on the dislike only-system as a way to give the overall app population control of ideas, rather than the algorithm tailoring itself to the individual, which may bring back the echo chamber issue.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the execution on our aesthetic vision for the app, the frutiger aero aesthetic comes through strongly, and works to give the user the impression of a light-hearted and welcoming experience.

What we learned

Frutiger aero is underrated. Beliefs on how algorithms should conventionally work can and should be challenged as many ideas outside of convention may have their own use cases.

What's next for Serendipity

There are features in the app which are under-utilised like the dislike "reasons" feature, which may provide information about why a user dislikes a post, which could be used to make more informed dislike-based un-recommendations.