The problem
Finding people to ride with is harder than it sounds. Ability is the thing that actually matters — a beginner and someone who only rides double blacks will both have a bad day — and none of that is visible in a group chat or a general-purpose social app. The brief was a way for riders to find other riders they would genuinely enjoy a day with.
What I built
- The whole matching system: a swipe-to-match flow between riders, and the pairing logic behind it.
- Stat tracking for days on the mountain, so a rider profile is backed by what they actually ride rather than what they claim.
- The full App Store release, and the bug-fixing pass that follows a first launch.
- Shredy, a matchmaker that scores riders against each other on stated interests and what they are looking for in a riding partner.
Decisions worth defending
- Shredy is an algorithm, not a model. It is presented as an intelligent matchmaker and it is exactly that — deterministic scoring over stated interests and intent. Calling it AI would have been the easy marketing choice; it would also have been untrue, unpredictable for users, and far more expensive to run for a matching problem that does not need a model.
- Ability first, not proximity first. Matching people who ride at the same level was the point of the product, so skill signals drive the pairing rather than simply who happens to be nearby.
Screens
