How one HumBio alum went from studying cultural neuroscience to using behavioral science research to help couples stay in love.
When Ali Maggioncalda ‘14 first stepped foot on Stanford’s campus as a freshman in 2010, she thought she had her future all planned out – study Human Biology and eventually become a doctor or an academic. Little did she know that 10 years later, her life would be consumed with all things related to love.
With interests in biology, psychology, and anthropology, Maggioncalda, a Palo Alto native, appreciated Human Biology’s flexible and interdisciplinary nature. The program allowed her to explore her curiosity in both the natural and social sciences as they related to the brain and human behavior.
After graduating and then working as a B-side core course associate, Maggioncalda quickly realized that she was no longer interested in going to medical school. As a CA, she loved working with students in sections, excited to see those lightbulb moments hit students when they finally understood a concept. She was also inspired by the faculty who not only taught but also did research focused on helping people live healthier happier lives.
This discovery led her to pursue a master’s in Service Design at the Royal College of Art (London) where she dove further into her interest in behavioral science and learned how to apply that knowledge to designing services and experiences that align with people’s health and wellness. During this time, Maggioncalda explored another curiosity of hers: modern love. She studied relationship science literature and became especially intrigued by the proliferation of dating apps and how their design affects our psychology and satisfaction in relationships, and the dangers of outsourcing needs typically met by a romantic partner to technology such as sex robots, virtual porn reality, and chatbot friends.
“Technology has made our lives a lot easier in many ways – with a couple of swipes, you can have your groceries delivered, find the perfect playlist for your mood, and even have a date lined up for tomorrow,” she explained. “But my dissertation was the jumping off point for me to say, whoa, we’re starting to see signs of people outsourcing even their interpersonal needs to technology, and if we don’t want to live in a super ‘black mirror’ world where people choose machines over messy but beautiful intimate relationships with other people, there needs to be something in between dating apps and couples’ therapy that helps people actually grow and remain in love.”
Using her dissertation as a theoretical framework, Maggioncalda set out to help couples work on their relationships in a way that would be fun and evidence-based. She started by reading academic literature on love and relationships such as the power of self-expansion, self-disclosure, capitalization attempts, attachment, the triangular theory of love, and more. She then brainstormed the kind of features, products, or services she could design to help people feel more understood, appreciated, and excited about their relationships. With this research and her ideas in mind, she began interviewing individuals and couples to learn more about their needs and developed prototypes to address these needs.
Nearly a year later in the fall of 2020, Maggioncalda officially launched her relationship wellness application, Lovewick. At its core, the free app helps couples who have found love stay in love by providing users with thousands of unique and fun date ideas, open-ended questions, and research-based romantic advice. The app also encourages couples to plan dates, journal, share memories, make wishlists, and track their relationship.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the popularity of entertainment sources soared as people of all ages and backgrounds searched for camaraderie and an escape from reality. Recognizing the increased popularity of TikTok, Maggioncalda decided that the platform provided a fantastic opportunity to discuss topics related to relationships and to guide users to Lovewick. She began experimenting with content on topics such as Valentine’s gift ideas, creative home or virtual dates, and questions to ask related to family, beliefs, and intimacy. With each video, she saw an uptick in engagement and downloads of the app. The biggest surge in the popularity of Lovewick and Maggioncalda’s fun and engaging TikToks came after she posted a video about Dr. Eli Finkel’s marriage journaling hack study – a reappraisal study that showcased the power of journaling and its positive impact on marital outcomes. The video received more than one million views and Maggioncalda recalls the surge of app downloads that followed.
Fast forward to today, Lovewick has over 300,000 registered users and Maggioncalda’s TikTok content has more than 37 million views. The platform has not only been an effective tool to reach more people using fewer dollars but it has also been a great way for Maggioncalda to receive product feedback organically, engage with both current and potential customers, and stay up-to-date on trending relationship and love-related content. “I see what kind of content is going viral in the relationship space and I will piggyback off of that content and say ‘hey, I have a solution to the problem you are facing’ or ‘hey let me tell you about the research-based reason that this is happening.’ I always cite my sources.”
As Lovewick’s user base continues to grow, Maggioncalda plans to find a way to monetize the app in a way that provides more value to the end customer and hopes to build out the company’s team soon.
When asked about the impact Human Biology has had on her journey and the creation of Lovewick, Maggioncalda immediately said that it has helped her tremendously. For one, she explained that it is difficult to fully understand a person and how they think or behave in a relationship without knowing human behavior from both a natural and social science perspective. “When I am looking at a possible new feature set, I am thinking about how it feeds into their daily lives and how these features drive engagement. But then I also think about the social aspects that influence this – if the couple is interfaith or interracial, if they have kids or not, or if there is an age gap – and I ask myself what the cultural nuances and layers on top of their usage and how can I design my app more universally with all those things in mind.”
In addition to developing an interdisciplinary and big-picture mindset, her time in Human Biology also taught her how to read papers and articles critically, pull out key insights, and reframe these insights or teachings in several ways to target specific audiences. And most importantly, backing up every feature, every TikTok, and every concept behind Lovewick with evidence-based research.
Looking back to her time in college, Maggioncalda shared that she never imagined that she would end up being an entrepreneur in the love and relationship space but she is so grateful for where she is now. “It has been an immense gift to follow my curiosities, dream something up and put it into a product that is now used by thousands of people. There are very few jobs in the world where you can feel that the thing you are creating is directly impacting thousands of people for the better,” she reflected. “On the days when it feels lonely to be a founder or I’m tired of thinking about love, I remind myself that I can’t imagine any job in the world better than what I am doing right now. So I’m giving [Lovewick] my best run!”
Lovewick is free to download and is available in both the Google Play and Apple App Stores. Learn more and check out what Lovewick is all about on Instagram and TikTok.
Ali Maggioncalda is the Founder of Lovewick, a free relationship wellness app helping over 250,000 couples stay in love once they've found it. Inspired by hundreds of interviews with diverse couples and dozens of research papers, Lovewick boasts the internet’s largest library of fun couples questions, fresh date ideas, & research-inspired relationship tips. Ali studied Human Biology at Stanford and then did her grad school research on romantic love and technology at the Royal College of Art in London. She's been featured in outlets like Forbes and the Daily Mail, has over 35M views on TikTok, and has raised $1,000,000 in pre-seed funding led by Corazon Capital, a fund managed by former Match Group, Tinder, and OkCupid executives.