Kory Garner
FROM THE ARCHIVE ✕ ANCESTRY ✕ MOBILE

DNA Matches

Rebuilding DNA Matches as a fully native, feature-complete experience — and closing the gap between the mobile and web DNA teams.

ROLE
Designer
TIMELINE
2021–2024
PLATFORMS
iOS · Android
COMPANY
Ancestry
DNA Matches — key screens

At a glance

  • Role: Designer
  • Timeline: 2021–2024
  • Platforms: iOS · Android
  • Context: DNA Matches had started life as an embedded webview

The problem

DNA first showed up inside the Family History app as an embedded webview — the pragmatic call when there wasn’t a team to build it natively. Later the dedicated DNA app team shipped a native Matches feature, but a lightweight one, well short of what the web experience could do. This project was about closing that gap: a comprehensive, genuinely native DNA Matches.

The approach

I started by laying the app and web feature sets side by side and prioritizing a roadmap out of the difference. Matches isn’t a casual feature — people lean on it for real genealogical research, so anything that shipped had to hold up against what they were used to on the web. Existing user research told me which information and actions actually mattered, so parity meant matching what people needed, not cloning every control.

We shipped in phases — the early ones internal only — and turned on customer releases once the experience was solid. All of it happened while the app was migrating from the legacy design system to Ancestry’s new one, so every screen had to be right in the new language too.

Native DNA Matches — the match list and filtering panel.
Matches, native — list and filtering
Sorting and filtering controls for DNA Matches, built for mobile.
Sort and filter, built for mobile

Outcome

Customers got the fuller experience they expected. But the outcome I valued most wasn’t a screen — it was that the mobile and web DNA teams came out of this working together, with a coordination habit that set up the features that came after.