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The ‘Stable Marriage Problem’ Solution Underpins Dating Apps and School Admissions

Project Category

Client

Tools

Project Brief

Objective: Visually illustrate the mechanics of the Gale-Shapley algorithm to accompany an article discussing how it works and various uses. 


Scope: Create two graphics, one showing the steps used to generate pairs and one to show how the results vary based on which group is suggesting the pairs, with versions formated for both desktop and mobile. 


Timeline: About a week from start to completion, working on and off with multiple rounds of revisions to optimize the encoded information and accompanying text. 


Team: I both devised an example that could be solved in 4-5 steps and have variable results, and designed the graphics. Max Springer, a AAAS Fellow at Scientific American, wrote the article and Allison Parshall was the managing editor. 


Links: 

Scientific American Article

This was a fun project because, much like the heat measurement graphics, there wasn't exactly "data" to encode. It's more qualitative information than quantitative, but still information that needed to be communicated visually.


Because the article used the setting of a Love Island-esque dating show to illustrate how the algorithm could result in drama-free pairings, I knew I'd have to base my design in the same context - pairing men and women. However, gender is a spectrum and the 'men and women' thing felt rooted in a heterosexual paradigm that isn't necessarily relatable to everyone, even if heterosexual couplings are still the majority.


Therefore, the biggest design consideration for this graphic was relating gender without relying on stereotypical, binary imagery. I believe I successfully addressed this concern by using geometric shapes to convey the two groups, and using related colors in the warm and cold spectra to show that the individuals within the group belonged together while keeping their individual identities distinct enough to follow through the entire graphic.


For a while, I referred to these graphics as the "Easter Illustrations," for obvious reasons. All the colors chosen are part of the Scientific American style guide.



Desktop Versions

Five-panel graphic illustrates the steps taken by the stable matching algorithm to find the most stable pairings among women and men, given a group of four of each gender and their individual match preferences.

Three-panel graphic shows the initial conditions of a group of men and women with their match preferences, the stable arrangement if the women are proposing to the men and the stable arrangement if the men are proposing to the women.

Mobile Versions




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