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About the new Beta Interface...

4757287
over 1 year ago

I have been using the new Beta UI for a bit now, and I must say, I hate it.

Here are my thoughts, and I am wondering if others feel the same or differently.

1. In Focus: I don't see the point of this. It basically shows a taller slideshow container with a maximum of 5 items. I don't see any additional information than wat was available on the tiles before, but now the information for 4 out of the 5 items is hidden, requiring me to scroll to see it. Why hide the same data that was available at a glance before, and make me scroll to see it?

2. At a Glance: This is now limited to 8 items. It requires me to click on See All to see the rest of my data. Why?

It makes no sense, since if I didn't want to see an item before, I could just uncheck it and hide it.

The vertical tiles are fine, but the rest feels more like someone new came in and wants to change things, for the sake of change. But it is not a good change, and it will impact my decision to stick with Garmin in the future.

Having said all that about the poor usability, I should complement the design itself, which is a nice refresh.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Sometimes software developers purposely make the user interface worse to keep you interacting. All this needs is some pop up ads.

  • 0 over 1 year ago
    4757287 said:
    I have been using the new Beta UI for a bit now, and I must say, I hate it.

    You lasted longer than I did! I binned it in less than a day. For me, the focus is wrong. I'm not a challenge seeking, records focused user. I use my watch primarily for health monitoring purposes. I record some activities, daily walks and bike rides, but not all. It's enough for me that my heart rate is recorded during those activities, and that I can see the impact they have on my body battery and general wellbeing.    

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to plus_ça_change

    Couldn't you just select those cards then? My main cards visible in the new home page are sleep score and body battery. After that I got the activities trends that show if I'm active or not.

    Event, training plans and challenges can be disabled to not show.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to e7andy

    Yes, I found that I could disable/hide them but I still found the dashboard not to my liking, and (as I say) indicated a focus that wasn't mine. There's no need for me to see today's activity for instance, nor the 'edit home' button or 'at a glance' heading. There's not a lot of screen space on my phone so I prefer it's not used unnecessarily. I found the previous display much more effective.Tell you what, I'll give it another go. I may just have been having a knee jerk reaction to change! 

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to e7andy

    Yes, you can hide Events, Training Plans and Challanges, and I did disable them right away. To me, they are useless.

    BUT, we still cannot see more than 8 activities without clicking on more.

    Also, the horizontal slideshow of In Focus hides information which should be available at a glance, requiring sliding and sliding to see supposedly "in focus" information.

    It's a terrible UX, although the design refresh is nice.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    More UX Changes for the Worse

    Today's Activity:
    I just realized that Today's Activity is also a side scroll slideshow. It shows only your latest Activity, and it hides the rest, so that you must start scrolling to see them.

    Before I could see my activities for the day and compare at a glance. Now I can see only one at a time. Why? It's just as bad as doing them in a dropdown menu or something.

    And why isn't Garmin showing the actual Activity name? Now you see stuff like "Strength" without any indication if it was Pushups or Squats, or whatever. So frustrating.


  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I agree. It's lazy, halfhearted and retrograde. Just moved things around and reduced data. Lots of blank space and reduced customisation.

    Garmin needs to employ people who are good at UI.

    "In Focus" cards too large and inefficient and shouldn't be on homepage.

    Reinstate small horizontal cards on home page that opens up to more detail as before as text and the eye naturally moves left to right.

    "At a glance" is a really poor title.

    Reinstate 1 & 7 day data.

    Add VO2 max graph to app. It's on the watch.

    Reinstate function to remove latest activity from home page.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to plus_ça_change

    Well, I gave up on the Beta today. It just sucks. It also changes the desktop browser functionality to mirror the app, and that's even dumber than on the phone - there is a lot more real estate on desktop, yet they still hide most of the information. The few little tile they show in the Beta are surrounded by a desert of empty space on the 27" monitor.

    Whoever is driving this at Garmin is really, really bad at UX. If they push this through, I'll get out of the Garmin universe, as this is a large last drop.


  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 4757287

    Whats even worse than all of the above, is the way that its totally messed the web app up, I previously had various dashboards set up displaying the information I wanted to see, now its all hidden away and can't be displayed on the home screen

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Martinr2

    Can't you opt out like on the phone app?