Pacebeats Case Study

PaceBeats: UI/UX case study by Timothy Forte, an Android app delivering real-time adaptive music recommendations to runners.

Overview: PaceBeats is an Android app that delivers real-time adaptive music recommendations to runners based on their live pace, heart rate, and mood, using a hybrid algorithm combining rule-based tempo matching with content-based filtering. Type: Academic Research. Duration: 2025. Team: Ken Patrick Garcia, Lanz Eron Corpuz, Brian Ashley Papa.

The Problem: most running apps that play music can't respond to a runner's changing pace, heart rate, or mood in real time, and 84.5% of Filipino adolescents fail to meet WHO daily activity recommendations. Three insights: tempo sync matters more than genre, mood input has to be frictionless (under 2 seconds), and offline states break trust immediately.

Key Design Decisions — Decision 01: emoji mood input over sliders, a one-tap 'How do you feel today?' screen with six mood options. Decision 02: post-run analytics, a Run Summary screen surfacing distance, duration, pace, and achievements, cited by 37.4% of 246 respondents as the second most valued feature.

Decision 03: music-first hierarchy on the Now Playing screen, showing pace on a map view with a mini player, expanding to a full player with album art. Followed by the full Hi-Fi screens showcase: onboarding, sign-in/sign-up, quick setup, home dashboard, run recording, analytics, and music library screens.

Outcome: 6 integrated modules delivered end-to-end, 49 survey respondents validated the concept, 3/3 ISO 25010 quality characteristics passed. Delivered a fully functional Android prototype with a validated hybrid recommendation pipeline; LightGBM selected as the production re-ranking model.

Reflections — What worked: emoji mood input, offline-first thinking, and the onboarding survey as a recommendation seed. What I'd do differently: test assumptions earlier, A/B test the onboarding length, and test the Now Playing screen at an actual running pace.

Timothy Forte, UI/UX Designer · Philippines