Yang Huiming graduated from HKUST with an MPhil in Physics. Before he started his own business, he held roles as big data engineer for Alibaba and Tencent. 

Huiming realized something profound as his career progressed: most people are busy with work or study and spend lots of time online, making it hard to make new friends. How should people expand their social circle and meet friends and even lifetime partners? He turned to the big data and artificial intelligence he studied for many years to solve this issue.  

With this in mind, LikeU, a dating app was born. He observed that most existing match-making algorithms remained fairly simple and online dating apps lacked identity verification procedures, which led to low recommendation quality and potential risk of dating scam. Huiming and his team hoped by incorporating big data and AI to enhance recommendations, users will want to make initial messaging with the first recommended person.        

During development, the LikeU team improved recommendations via AI analysis on facial characteristics, personality testing and voice classification, traits that are considered important when evaluating first impressions of others. Additionally, Huiming and his team added a number of interactive activities that would help improve the usefulness of its user recommendations. Thanks to the introduction of big data, average user ratings increased above 30 percent; in just two years, more than a hundred pairs of app users got married.    

One of Huiming’s future plans for LikeU include incorporating psychological support services into the app, enabling users to find professional help and skills in coping with relationship difficulties.