Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race
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While the Race’s distinguishing feature - the digital crown - is a very handy thing and highly appreciated by me and others, there are some things simply awkward in adaption of the Suunto UI to the Race.
I don’t really understand why UX experts did not spot this, but alas, here is my input on this:Scrolling through a menu with the crown is a blast - I like it. But things tend to be dangerous when doing unrecoverable things.
When in an activity, the pause menu is such a “dangerous” place.
You need it for two completely contradicting actions:
A) access options while still in the sports activity
B) finish a sports activityThe order in the menu is as follows:
- Resume
- Options
- End
- Discard
Depending on whether you’re intention is “A-options” or “B-finish line”, you need different things and others are unrecoverably dangerous to you.
When in need of changing options, it is dangerous to accidentally push the crown when you “overshoot” to “End” because end is final, it shows no confirmation question. Accidentally hit End and you’re session is immediately over. It’s not lost, but it’s well… I hate to have 2 activities instead of one.
If you just finished a hard workout or race at a finish line of a major marathon, pulse and adrenaline high, accidentally hitting “Discard” is luckily guarded by a confirmation question.
But: it is easier to reach Discard by turning the crown than it is to hit End, because of the order. If End would be the last option, it would be much easier to immediately hit by turning the crown to the very end. There is no overshooting there.My proposal and question to the UX designers of Suunto:
A) reordering Discard and End would be a major win for the usability in two regards: finishing a session is easier even with shaky hands. And accidentally hitting End when all you want is Options is less likely.
B) I simply do not understand at all who wanted a Discard option in the first place. From support staff I learned it was recently added. But WHY??
If you save (End) you can easily delete the saved session in the next step, there simply is no use case I see where an immediate Discard is beneficial to anybody.
Recording and then discarding is something you do 1 out of 100 times - End (save) is what you want 99% of the time. Suunto offers 2 ways to throw a recording away and only one to save it. I doubt this is what people do most of the time.C) now IF my voice is heard, removing the Discard again would still leave End directly next to Options and we are back to the first problem: I never accidentally want to End when I want to access Options, because End is immediately final, there is confirmation “Really end?” coming next. This is a major flaw.
IF on the other hand End and Discard swap places, Discard would act as a barrier to the dangerous End.So, I know some people here think everything is absolutely great with Suunto - so please just do NOT answer with stupid comments. Thanks.
I want UX experts to follow my train of thought, not fan boys. -
@Olaf-Gottschalk also I don’t really see the need for a separate discard option as the activity can be deleted before syncing anyways…
So no idea of what’s behind this.Your other thoughts make sense as well to me.
And again I don’t know what thoughts went into the current design.Anyway, my personal way to handle activities ending is: press upper button into pause.
Then leave the watch there until I really have time to think and breathe again.t6, S6, Elementum Terra, Ambit 3 Sapphire, Spartan Ultra Copper, Traverse Alpha, S7 Graphite LE, S9B Ambassador, S9P Granite Blue Titanium, S9PP Titanium Sand, Vertical All Black, Race Titanium Charcoal, Race S All Black, Race S Titanium Canary
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@Egika said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
Anyway, my personal way to handle activities ending is: press upper button into pause.
Then leave the watch there until I really have time to think and breathe again.Same here. But I always have a bad feeling when things are not saved just yet, so I kind of hate this “in between” stage…
Those of you who follow some of my posts and always complain that I am always so negative about things and those who tell me that features need priorities and blah: given that someone really prioritized to implement this “Discard” feature recently: I would really like to understand why on earth any programmer was given this task… A complete waste of time as deleting an activity later is very easy and rarely needed in the first place…
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@Egika said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
Anyway, my personal way to handle activities ending is: press upper button into pause.
Then leave the watch there until I really have time to think and breathe again.May I ask what you do when you want to access Options? Like for enabling a Suunto App or changing the route? I find this situation even more worrying as I am in the middle of a trail and absolutely don’t want to End the activity but need to scroll to Options with shaky hands…
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I was thinking something similar. But the issue I see is that it is far too easy to press “Discard” instead of “End”. I would propose the following:
- Add a separator (simple line) between “End” and “Discard”
- Scrolling fast to the bottom of the menu, always ends at “End”. This way it’s not possible to get to the “Discard” item if a user scrolls fast to the bottom
- If you want to discard the workout, you need to scroll again downwards
The second needed scroll interaction is simply for safety, that the user doesn’t activate “Discard” accidentally. I don’t think that this would do any harm to the UX, since “Discard” is definitely not a primary action in this menu (99% of the time users need the other options in this menu).
Another option would be to remove “Discard” all together and do it like Polar. If you end a workout that’s shorter then 10min, the watch could ask when ending the workout: “Do you want to save this short session?”
This could be mixed with the separator and the two scrolling interactions.
I do it the same as @Egika: First just pause, and end the workout when if I have full control over my fingers
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@Olaf-Gottschalk said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
@Egika said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
Anyway, my personal way to handle activities ending is: press upper button into pause.
Then leave the watch there until I really have time to think and breathe again.May I ask what you do when you want to access Options? Like for enabling a Suunto App or changing the route? I find this situation even more worrying as I am in the middle of a trail and absolutely don’t want to End the activity but need to scroll to Options with shaky hands…
For options there’s no need to pause the activity. Just press and hold the middle button for options. Easy.
t6, S6, Elementum Terra, Ambit 3 Sapphire, Spartan Ultra Copper, Traverse Alpha, S7 Graphite LE, S9B Ambassador, S9P Granite Blue Titanium, S9PP Titanium Sand, Vertical All Black, Race Titanium Charcoal, Race S All Black, Race S Titanium Canary
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@Egika Thank’s about this tip. While I didn’t find anything bad about order after you pause it, now I do.
Further to what was mentioned above, I would welcome an option to “Resume later”. Which I appreciate is a bit long shot
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Can I please add in a plea to change the big numbers from Suunto +?
It’s a black central band with white writing, the top and bottom it’s white with black writing.It’s really difficult to see properly due to the contrast (and it would be nice if we could actually customise it to some actually useful information……)
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@Egika said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
to Options with shaky hands…For options there’s no need to pause the activity. Just press and hold the middle button for options. Easy.
See, I did not know this. But on the other hand: if you do this, does the recording continue? So if you spent a few minutes accessing a route or such, it does not pause?
So then I would prefer the first way to actually pause and do the selection… -
@Olaf-Gottschalk said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
@Egika said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
Anyway, my personal way to handle activities ending is: press upper button into pause.
Then leave the watch there until I really have time to think and breathe again.May I ask what you do when you want to access Options? Like for enabling a Suunto App or changing the route? I find this situation even more worrying as I am in the middle of a trail and absolutely don’t want to End the activity but need to scroll to Options with shaky hands…
I rarely or never change S+ when running, in a race I will lock the buttons so all I can do is scroll screens. The last thing I want to do is stop the activity. I have several different custom sport modes set up with the S+ I want depending on what type of exercise.
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@Olaf-Gottschalk said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
@Egika said in Proposal to change UI for Suunto Race:
to Options with shaky hands…For options there’s no need to pause the activity. Just press and hold the middle button for options. Easy.
See, I did not know this. But on the other hand: if you do this, does the recording continue? So if you spent a few minutes accessing a route or such, it does not pause?
So then I would prefer the first way to actually pause and do the selection…The recording does indeed continue. Since I run exclusively trails and race ultras, I do not pause the watch. When in a race if I stop to tie shoes or put some clothes on or for any other reason the clock keeps running. Typically if I pause my watch I forget to start it. What has been asked for before and would be incredibly useful is an alert if you start moving again!
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@wmichi me, coming from Polar, I can state that this less than 10 minutes “do you really want to save?” is also quite annoying… Happened to me many times that I actually wanted the activity even as short as it is and accidentally pressed the “back” button which acts as no here…
If Discard was added to mimic Polar, it’s not done correctly.
I simply don’t see the need for this at all.
Just End and delete on the next screen by scrolling to the end. It’s just as fast.
Actually, when thinking about this - the delete on the summary is quite dangerous as its confirmation is touch enabled and half of the screen means “yes”. I do not understand why important things like this are not purely Button press to avoid accidentally touching the screen…
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@Olaf-Gottschalk My opinion on both Discard and End, these should have secondary warnings. Discard does but End does not. I agree with the crown it is easy to be in the wrong selection.
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A countdown could also be added, similarly to how software update is implemented at the moment.
Press “Discard”, display a 10s (or 5s) countdown with information that the workout will be discarded in 10s with a big “Cancel” at the bottom.
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I did not really want to start a full blown “change the Suunto UI” discussion.
All I am saying is three things:
A) given the digital crown, having End at the end of the list of options makes it much easier to correctly select.
B) having a Discard is at least IMHO completely unnecessary in the first place.
C) End should have a confirmation question just like Discard has today, because it is also “dangerous” when selected inadvertently.Rearranging the items should be trivial for Suunto.
Removing Discard should also be a trivial no-brainer task.
Adding the same confirmation question to End is “some” minor work. -
@Olaf-Gottschalk There must have been a reason for Discard and I remember that being requested. But I think a good idea to move End to the end:) This menu was formalized prior to most of the development of the Race and if the Crown is used on future watches, which I assume it will be your suggestion seems like a very good one.
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@Brad_Olwin I would really like to know what the reasoning behind discard was… Nobody gets hurt by a false recording - easy to delete in the next step already. If there is any good reason, I can’t figure this one out…
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In my opinion, the best think to do is to stop recording and you have to push the crown for at least 3 seconds to confirm your order.
In red if you want to discard, in green if you want to register.
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@Olaf-Gottschalk
I like this Discard but agree move End to the end.
After i did false recording or sometimes i do some testing, i don’t want to save it and delete it later but prefer to discard it immediately.
My SA are linked/synchronised to Komoot, Strava, Wikiloc etc. I don’t want manually go to those FEW website/apps to delete my false recording/testing which is quite troublesome.
Also this false recording/testing, my friends will receive notification after my activity was auto uploaded/sync to those apps. I don’t want this to happen. -
@babychai correct - this seems to be the only difference between discard and delete - BUT - if you delete the recording on the summary screen by scrolling down to the end, it is also not synchronised.
So, technically Discard is IMHO still not needed.
Here’s a pro tip for Strava enthusiasts like me: the default setting for visibility should always be private - not public.
Because you should edit the title, add pictures, etc and decide whether this activity is worth a post.
I honestly hate my friends who auto publish “Lunch run” and “Morning ride” stuff. It is the most boring and utterly unnecessary “social media” garbage I can think of.
It is equivalent to a Facebook status “I just had lunch”.My workflow: Strava is set to private only.
I do my stuff - once I am done, I hop over to Strava, edit the title, add pictures, set the equipment right and then switch to public (if it’s valuable).
I do not publicly post indoor swims or yoga sessions without any “social” aspect.
