RunBuddy

When runners aren’t sure if a group matches their pace, social vibe, or goals, they hesitate to join. Past experiences with cliquey groups, feelings of comparison, or fear of holding others back made them feel discouraged. This uncertainty often stems from a lack of upfront information, leading runners to avoid joining entirely.

Our research highlighted the importance of setting clear expectations—not only pace but also group vibe, social dynamics, and emotional safety. Many participants preferred joining through friends because they felt more confident about fitting in. Others were drawn to larger groups, which they believed offered more diversity in pace and personality. Compatibility cues like shared values, flexibility, and social tone reduce hesitation and encourage participation.

We conducted a literature review to understand the challenges people face when joining running groups. We found that clear structure and a welcoming environment encourage people to join and continue participating, while uncertainty can discourage new runners. Building social connections was also identified as key to helping people stick with the habit.

We mapped features across three major running apps to identify gaps. None of them offer compatibility matching or set clear expectations about group dynamics before a runner joins.

We conducted semi-structured interviews to explore how novice to intermediate runners discover and join group runs. We focused on social dynamics, motivation, emotional safety, and uncertainty.

We used inductive, descriptive coding to let themes emerge from raw data. This helped us reflect participants’ voices, gain grounded insights, and mitigate bias.

Clustering the labels surfaced these themes:
– Social Fit & Vibes as a primary motivator
– Emotional Safety & Psychological Comfort
– Reducing Uncertainty about groups

We mapped pain points across pre-run, during-run, and post-run. The MVP focuses on the pre-run phase to reduce uncertainty and social anxiety—key barriers that prevent runners from joining (and ultimately affect the rest of the journey).

We explored a wide range of ideas (emotion-based search, past runner reviews, first-time badges, MBTI-style matching). We selected an onboarding questionnaire as our MVP, plus past reviews as a supporting feature. This direction lets us collect meaningful user data early and reduce uncertainty—essential for building trust, especially for first-timers.

The solution tailors content based on social compatibility and logistics while improving through lightweight feedback.

• Onboarding questionnaire — captures pace, goals, and preferences.
• Group exploration — browse and find compatible groups.
• Drop a review — quick post-run feedback to improve recommendations.

We ran three rounds (including a pilot) to iterate on content, navigation, and interactions. Participants (18–50, beginner to intermediate) completed find-this and navigate-there tasks with short post-task questions, then a SUS for overall clarity and usability.

Clear compatibility cues

The group section felt dense, but compatibility details were helpful. We added a compatibility badge and adjusted hierarchy for better scannability, helping users feel more confident joining.

Fewer steps, more accuracy

We removed questions unrelated to matching to reduce friction. Some users felt the flow was long, so we kept only questions that map to tags reflecting group vibe. This improved efficiency without sacrificing match quality.