01 — PROBLEM

Metronomes interrupt the practice they're supposed to support

Musicians rely on metronomes to build consistent timing, but the tools themselves often get in the way. Changing tempo mid-piece usually means stopping to fiddle with a dial or app, the click can be too loud, too quiet, or just unpleasant to play against, and most metronomes give no feedback beyond a beat. We wanted to know: could a metronome respond to a musician instead of just ticking at them?

02 — RESEARCH

Literature review + a survey of MSU music students

We started with human-robot interaction research on musical timing. A study on the robotic marimba player Shimon found that robots sync with human musicians far better when they can see expressive gestures, not just hear a beat — timing in music is physical, not just auditory. Other studies on robotic musicians and conductors reinforced the same idea: musicians trust tools that feel predictable and supportive, and they're quick to notice when a robotic collaborator feels mechanical rather than musical.

To ground that in real behavior, we surveyed MSU music students on their metronome habits and frustrations — a small sample (eight responses), but consistent enough to shape real design decisions. A few findings shaped the whole direction of the design:

That told us three things clearly: tempo adjustment needed to happen without breaking playing flow, portability mattered more than we'd assumed, and a tuner wasn't a nice-to-have — it was close to expected. Feedback preference was more split than we anticipated too: 57% preferred audio cues alone, 29% wanted both audio and visual, and only 14% wanted visual alone — which is part of why we designed toward multiple feedback modes rather than picking just one. Students were similarly divided on whether the device should score their performance (43% yes, 43% no), so we treated scoring as an optional, toggleable feature rather than a default.

03 — DESIGN

From a mechanical-metronome sketch to a gesture-based device

Our first concept, sketched before the survey came back, mimicked an old-fashioned pendulum metronome — lean a physical arm to set the tempo, with a small screen and a microphone built in. Once the survey results came in, we revised the design around what students actually said they wanted: a small, portable digital device with a split display — a metronome view on top and a live tuner on the bottom, both always active — plus a tempo dial and volume knob that could be adjusted without stopping to play.

The signature feature was a "beat arm" — a physical gesture, closer to a conductor's motion than a click track — meant to give musicians something visual and embodied to follow rather than just an audio tick, directly informed by the Shimon research.

04 — TESTING

Wizard of Oz testing with real music students

Since we didn't have a fully working device, we ran "Wizard of Oz" testing: one of us played the role of the device (manually advancing a paper prototype) while the other took notes, and music students interacted with it as if it were real — setting a tempo, playing along, and reacting out loud to what they saw and heard. We structured the sessions around the specific pain points the survey surfaced: setting a tempo, changing it mid-excerpt, responding to both feedback modes, and — for the eventual working build — how reliably a microphone could pick up playing in a real practice room.

The beat arm was the standout: several participants said it reminded them of watching a conductor, and it gave them a reference point they could anticipate rather than just react to. The tempo dial made mid-passage adjustments feel natural. The LED feedback was more mixed — helpful in dim rooms, distracting in bright ones — which told us brightness needed to be adjustable rather than fixed.

05 — REFLECTION

What we'd do differently

The biggest lesson was that real user needs should drive every design decision, not assumptions about what a metronome "should" do. We expected visual cues to be enough on their own; testing showed musicians wanted the embodied, conductor-like gesture instead. We also ran into real constraints — we didn't have the resources to fully build the Arduino-based device, so TempoMate stayed at the paper-prototype and Wizard-of-Oz stage rather than becoming a working piece of hardware. To manage the remaining scope, we broke the rest of the project into staged weeks — finalizing research and components, initial assembly, integrating and refining features like the tuner, then a dedicated evaluation week with real MSU music students before writing up the final report. Given more time, next steps would be building the physical prototype, testing microphone reliability in louder rooms, and exploring adjustable "strict" vs. "expressive" tempo modes.

Full research report and presentation available on request.