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Tidepool: eHarmony For The Workplace

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It's not so much that Dr. Galen Buckwalter wants to make romantic matches at work, but he does want the workplace to be more harmonious.

Buckwalter, the chief scientist behind eHarmony, was always interested in how data could change the office space. The data science that brought America more marriages is now creating a way to make work types more compatible.

“I always had in the back of my mind that there was a killer business to be had both in the job space and in the whole realm of developing visual assessments,” he said.

Together with CEO Kabir Sagoo, they have come up with Tidepool, a visual “assessment” that allows each user to figure out who they are -- as a work type.

There are 60 work types, each with a unique title (i.e. Sagoo is "The Maverick;” Buckwalter is a "Freeverse Poet”). The assessment works like a game in which users choose certain photographs over others and activities they would prefer over others (i.e. a biology class versus painting, working outside versus inside).

How are they different than Myers-Briggs?

Sagoo said, "We’re not alphabet soup. There are no INFJs. There is no elegance there. With Tidepool, it’s all about design. We don’t want you to feel like you are filling out a scantron. This isn’t SATs. This is interactive. You are having a dialog with the assessment.”

Buckwalter was a graduate student at Fuller Theological Seminary when he started in data science. He originally thought he was going to be a psychologist, but soon learned factor analysis and was turned on to big data and machine learning. Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist, was the dean at Fuller at the time, and had an idea for matchmaking. From his experience in clinical work, Warren was convinced that a lot of problems in marriages had to do with bad matches. Together with Buckwalter’s analysis skills they built eHarmony, which launched in 2000.

“I was surprised senseless when it took off,” Buckwalter said. “I always believed in the models -- that they would overall provide better matches than people would find in the wild.”

“It seems to be working. They are saying now -- it’s 5 percent of all marriages in the United States. The big question will be divorce rate,” he said about early eHarmony data.

Taking the same thinking and science, Buckwalter and Sagoo are targeting workplace relationships. “The logic is similar. We want to assess a wide range of psychological characteristics,” Buckwalter said.

Tidepool feels like an engaging game and allows users to choose from activities, photographs, colors, and graphics. Similar to fundamentals of a Rorschach test, the photographs provide variation in vista, texture, and perspective.

“The conceptualization of personality which I think is most well-established is the ‘Big Five’ (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism). We begin with the assumption that the ‘Big Five’ is real. Personality is an organizing principal of the brain. Pictures and your response to pictures will reflect your personality,” Buckwalter said. “We then look at the work types as strongly influenced by your personality and by your interests.”

At the end of the assessment, your work type is determined.

They have also created a share-and-compare tool that describes what work types you would work best with and with which types you might have tension. If tension is part of the equation, suggestions are made for how best two conflicting types might work better together.

The pair are hoping that Tidepool will help companies hire employees that fit within their culture. “We want better teams, better workplaces, better one-one-ones,” Buckwalter said.

They also envision other uses for the tool -- in arenas outside of work.

Sagoo said, “This isn’t fortune cookie stuff, this is real feedback that’s supportive. We want to make people more productive. We hope to contribute to a better understanding of yourself.”