PacePartner

Have you ever wanted to go for a run but been too scared to go alone? PacePartner is the perfect match-making app for runners!

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Check out our prototype here!

Inspiration

Our vision was to create the lovechild of Strava and Hinge, inspired by the weekly UK ParkRun events. One of our co-founders, Lottie, has been running long distance for many years but the other, Kirsten, has only recently started. Whilst we love running together for fun, we recognise that finding partners that match us in pace and distance will push us as athletes onto greater things.

What it does

When opening the app, it asks you for your name and preferred pace, distance and terrain. After you have entered this information, our algorithm will match you with some potential users in our database that you have at least one thing in common with. From this, you would be able to contact that person and potentially have found your perfect running partner!

How we built it

We built this prototype on an HTML website for simplicity and our main focus was on getting the matching algorithm functioning. This algorithm was created using underlying Javascript that takes the users' input as a dictionary and iterates through the user profile database. If there is a match in one or more categories, it displays that profile as a potential match for you! Also, if the user does not enter information in one of the boxes, an error message will pop up and prompt the user to fully complete the form:)

Challenges we ran into and what we learned

The biggest challenge was probably brushing up on our Javascript knowledge for creating the algorithm as it has been a while for both of us. There were many new technical things that we learned as well and as we spent many hours trying and failing to get our code working as well as debugging each others' work.

Having the manpower (or womanpower) of only two people, the task seemed daunting at first in the time given, but we learned to trust each other's areas of expertise and split the task into two streams to maximise efficiency.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud that we have a fully functioning prototype that allows you to input your information and return actual user profiles (fake as they may be)!

What's next for PacePartner

We would love to extend the app to include other sports, not just running. We would also have more questions on our app that will make the matching even more precise, including location, times of day where you are free etc. Linking our app to sports tracking app (like Strava) would also be great as this would widen our audience and create even more perfect matches.

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