ROLE
UX/UI Designer
TIMELINE
4 months
SKILLS
UX/UI Design, Prototyping, Design Systems
Sole+ Fitness
Designing a Music-Integrated Running Experience
Over the summer, I worked as a UX/UI Design Intern at PA Consulting and was responsible for re-envisioning the look and feel of the Sole Fitness app. Sole+ is an experiment in blending music personalization with treadmill performance tracking to make workouts more immersive, motivational, and social.
Problem Statement
Treadmill runners need a personalized and integrated music experience that adapts to their workout intensity, mood, and goals.
Generic music algorithms often disrupt their flow, right when music is the most critical motivator and performance enhancer.
Sole Fitness is a fitness equipment company with a treadmill companion app. The current app lacks music integration as it uses predetermined stations from Feed.fm.
Imagine being mid-run, hitting your stride, and your playlist suddenly shifts to a slow ballad. Your rhythm breaks. Your motivation dips. That’s the exact frustration I set out to solve.
The Solution
What if Spotify and Strava had a baby?
🔗 View final pitch deck here!
Sole+ is an integrated music and fitness platform offering music insights to explore the impact music has on workout performance.
Music Therapy Research
Rate of Perceived Exertion
Motivational music and synchronization have been shown to extend a runner’s time to exhaustion compared to when there is no music (Bood et al., 2013).
Improved Health
The use of music interventions can create improvements in physical health–related quality of life.
User Research
Interviewing 11 PA associates who workout to understand music's impact on treadmill runners
After conducting 11 in-depth interviews with associates regularly run to exercise, I gathered insights to understand how music influences exercise habits, performance, and motivation.
Final Design
Onboarding Quiz
Quiz results assign each user a music personas based on their treadmill and listening habits.
Personas have predetermined sound settings that can be edited/adjusted if desired.
Pace & Music BPM Analyzer
Each workout activity music summary provides a running pace and music BPM comparison.
Click on checkpoints in the graph to see pace, song BPM, and the track that was playing in that moment.
Music Insights & Custom Playlists
Each workout activity music summary provides a running pace and music BPM comparison.
Click on checkpoints in the graph to see pace, song BPM, and the track that was playing in that moment.
Run Rewind
Inspired by Spotify’s Wrapped, each workout activity comes with a run recap of your treadmill performance and music statistics.
This fun social component of the Sole+ experience was designed for those motivated by fitness communities!
Sole+ Features and Flows
Design System
Don’t wait to design
Getting too rigid with process stunts progress and creativity. I began to design while simultaneously solidifying my research and concepts in order to ship quickly.
Navigating design ambiguity
Being given an open-ended project meant defining my own problem space. I cast a broad research approach, but then funneled down into a single focus area.
Don’t ideate independently
Leaning on AI tools (Figma, Midjourney, Miro, Google Stitch) and working cross functionally with Human Insights helped streamline my workflow, bring new perspectives to light, and solidify the validity of existing concepts.
🔮 Next Steps
I'm in the process of coordinating a project pitch to a partner at PA Consulting, the former CEO of Sole Fitness, and a Berklee music professor!
Process Overview
Project Timeline
Competitive Analysis
Current Sole App
Music & Audio
Music and audio services attempt to provide curated mixes and music suggestions, but often miss the mark.
Fitness & Running
Running apps lack advanced integration with music services. There's no feature to show the impact of music on one's workout performance.
User Research
Zeroing In on the Problem and Opportunity Space
I took all the notes from the 11 interviews and affinity mapped them into themes, insights, and opportunities.
User Stories
As a…
I synthesized my research insights into specific personas based on user needs and motivations when it came to their relationship with music during workouts. This helped me ideate features for different user groups.
Ideation
User Flows
I mapped out user actions for specific features and capabilities, and then categorized them by priority level.
Sketches, Sketches, and More Sketches!
Ideation Workshop
One of my main challenges was:
How do I narrow focus after doing so much research and brainstorming?
Solution: I hosted a concept exploration workshop with the DX team where I presented my problem space and key user insights. I then gave everyone 15 minutes to openly sketch ideas and features.
Design
Wireframes
Visual Identity Exploration
