this is probably not the answer to anyone's modern dating troubles. nevertheless, the issue dating.codes tries to solve is uncertainty. ideally, it can give some help with the question "should i approach this person?".
i got the idea from Nathan Young's tweet which reads "A female friend works at <> in <>. She's looking to get married and figures her work is full of eligible guys. How does she find the single <> without getting HR'd? What's the secret romantic availability signal? Dress nicely? Laptop stickers? Buy an iPhone?"
to which i thought "yeah, laptop stickers would be cool, actually". the idea is that there are people you run into often (work, campus, cafes, conferences), but (wrt dating) it'd be awkward to specify exactly what you might be looking for. at least until you get acquainted, but that can take a long time.
and while it's quicker to just link to a dating profile or a 'date-me' doc via a qr code, the pros of the 3-coloured-shapes code are that it's memorable and discreet. if you do see it on the back of someone's laptop, you don't have to aim your phone camera at it. there are certainly far more elegant and efficient software solutions possible in this space. i hope to see them soon.
my personal code is
if you're struggling try