Zwipe — Swipe Tinder on your bike
Self-quarantine sucks, It makes me feel more lonely and I spend too much time on Tinder more than ever. Too much time inside makes me overweight, not fit like before. I love cycling for workouts and losing weight but outdoor riding is preferred. I need to lose some weight and find a date at the same time.
Virtual indoor cycling is actually interesting. Peloton bike has 4.4m members and getting more exponentially. I’ve tried Zwift for sometimes and it was a joy time. I have a basic affordable setup using a basic trainer, cheap ANT+ speed, cadence, and heart rate sensor. My complaint about Zwift is the graphic is too basic for a PC master race like me. I’ve tried to create a virtual ride on GTA-V which has a better graphic, interesting world but the riding mechanic required a phone app to make turns using the real handlebar to avoid traffic. No gameplay, it has nothing to accomplish. It was not the best user experience.
What about swipe Tinder on the bike? Getting fit while looking for a potential date, sounds amazing. It’s a whole new experience of online dating. I could sell a setup like Peloton for a custom experience at a premium price. It could be a new business. The last time VCs funded a horny genius, it was Facebook. Ugh, I hate money. I am getting ahead of myself while discovering the idea.
The Name
The name “Zwipe” simply copied the idea from Zwift. “Zwift” from “Swift”, “Zwipe” from “Swipe”, you get it right? In fact, I almost got sue by Match Group (Tinder parent company) for named my AI Tinder bot “SwipeRight”. They said “swipe” is a trademark own by them. Zwipe would be probably just fine(Wink Wink).
The UX
The user experience of Zwipe should be seamless browse photos and swipe without the user have to do anything else to interact with the Tinder app except riding. It can not be too easy to automatically swipe any profile without the user investing any effort. So no swipe from turning bike handlebar left and right. I use a short distance to make the user invest their effort by riding 100m to swipe a profile. Riding 40kph can swipe a profile by 9 seconds. If you can ride faster you can swipe faster. For swiping right or like a profile, the user needs to attack(cycling term) by riding 20% faster than the average speed (48kph at 40kph avg speed)and super-like by riding 30% faster (52kph at 40kph avg speed). It’s not healthy to like everyone, literally. The missing part of this is Zwipe is displaying the current effort of riding. It could show stats e.g. speed, cadence, power, heart rate, distance but the UI of Tinder would be messy. Zwipe will show only current swipe action on-screen based on your effort e.g. NOPE, LIKE, SUPER LIKE. There is no progress bar of the distance to swipe. It just browses up to 6 photos of a profile. More than 6 photos in 10 seconds just too fast to process at least for me on anaerobic.
The Tech
Here is the best part of how the whole system works. You gonna have an ANT+ speed sensor, ANT+ USB stick connected to a computer. The computer needed to install a driver for the Zwipe Core program to access the sensor data. Install the Zwipe Chrome Extension on the Google Chrome web browser. The extension will connect to the Zwipe Core to get the sensor data and swipe while you open the Tinder app on the web browser and ride your bike.
The Result
Zwipe ride is fun and engaging. I will lose weight in no time.
