Abstract
ABSTRACT What does it mean for a dating app to be queer by design? In this article, I examine the extent to which Lex, the queer dating and social app, diverges from algorithmically heteronormative interface paradigms to express queer temporalities and relationalities. To do so, I analyze Lex’s 2019–2022 interface using the walkthrough method, which involves critically engaging with an app’s features and functionality, vision, operating model, and governance, to uncover embedded cultural meanings and assumptions. With walkthroughs, I analyze Lex’s software components, terms of use, privacy policy, community guidelines, and branding discourse, while considering the platform’s original references to archival personal ads. From this analysis, I argue that Lex’s affordances queer dating app design by resisting compulsory data collection, countering binary sorting and categorical definitions of gender and sexuality, and disengaging from economies of visibility through text-based interaction, highlighting situated histories of queer information networks amidst normative frameworks. I extend this work to characterize how queer affordances in digital infrastructures can encourage fluid identities and pluralistic modes of connecting that draw upon rich histories of resistance in queer information practices, reinforcing calls for increased intersectionality in interface design.
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