Just recently the automated names created for GPS activities seem to have changed - for years my runs from home have been titled with the name of the town that I live in. Suddenly they have changed to a title which relates to a local council administrative area rather than a geographic location. This is not a major problem just wondered if anyone else had noticed this and whether it's intentional or something that's changed either with the recent Garmin updates (or with the underlying map provider's data)
Clearly some people will prefer very localised auto-labelling and some larger scale.
Actually, I have only seen one single poster - whom I would not consider representative of a typical Garmin user, given his quite fierce defense of any design choice Garmin makes - express his preference of the larger scale.
Actually, I have only seen one single poster - whom I would not consider representative of a typical Garmin user, given his quite fierce defense of any design choice Garmin makes - express his preference of the larger scale.
Just in case you were slyly referring to me…
I prefer more accuracy, full stop. As I've clearly explained, from my perspective and experience as a user, the accuracy has improved for the majority of my runs (all in the same vicinity), and the loss in precision (of which I'm well aware) luckily has no adverse effect whatsoever to those runs. I'd be thrilled if the automatic naming actually had the precision to the level of suburb (and there are multiple suburbs with postcode 2000; Sydney, as in the CBD, is just one of them), or better still all the way to the landmark (e.g. Sydney Opera House Running vs Royal Botanic Garden Running vs The Domain Running) where I actually spent most of the time during an activity, but I think that's just too much to expect.
My ‘defense’ of Garmin's design choices usually boils down to, “You (like me) as a device user has no say in the matter; you can only get what you're given or offered, and your choice is between the options of rejecting what's on offer and walking away (without satisfaction), or swallow your pride and make the best out of what's on offer (thus getting partial satisfaction while being mindful of the gap between that and what is ideal, but knowing that nobody really cares about you).” Telling people it is what it is, and showing them the walls of box they're already in but refuse to acknowledge (as opposed to my putting them back in the box), does not mean I think Garmin's design decisions are the best technically, most elegant or whatever. I'm more interested in the power dynamic, and as a fellow customer making sure nobody is under the illusion that the Customer controls the narrative in the commercial relationship, even in a user-to-user forum like this one.
Ouch, was it that obvious? Well, I have never been good at subtlety.
Anyway, your discern between "precision" and "accuracy" seems more like a word play to me. I can't relate to that.
What matters to me is that all my activities from different locations are now bundled together under one common location name - which is just as unusable as no location name at all.
I would rather have identifiable - and possibly erroneous - location names.
Whether you call that "precision" or "accuracy" is of little interest to me and probably to anyone else reading this thread.
Anyway, your discern between "precision" and "accuracy" seems more like a word play to me. I can't relate to that.
That is something covered in high school syllabi for physical sciences here.
What matters to me is that all my activities from different locations are now bundled together under one common location name - which is just as unusable as no location name at all.
I would rather have identifiable - and possibly erroneous - location names.
So edit the names promptly, while the activities are still reasonably fresh in your mind, to suit your expected needs with regard to finding or identifying particular activities at a glance in the future. Automatic always implies taking some level of control away from the end-user, and the ability and opportunity able to assert one's personal preferences (and have them respected and guaranteed) through customisation settings are not inherent promises of automation; nor is the end-user's satisfaction with the outcome, especially in the absence of manual interventions or ad hoc adjustments during or after the automated processing.
That is something covered in high school syllabi for physical sciences here.
You misunderstand. I have no trouble understanding the meaning of the words.
What I have trouble understanding is that I have a well described problem, and you think you can make it go away if you use certain words to describe the problem.
That is word play to me. Utterly meaningless.
So edit the names promptly, while the activities are still reasonably fresh in your mind,
This is very much in line with your normal type of argumentation.
I have another approach: When a product could work better, I tell the developers, so they have chance of rectifying their mistake. Especially when they have actually shown that they have got it right on an earlier occasion, like in this case, this kind of feedback has a chance of success.
I live with smug responses from those who can't imagine that trying to get the product improved could be a good idea.
In the UK, for rural areas, activities used to be named by village (I guess by civil parish/council ward) but now are named by much larger local authority areas. It means that all runs i run within that large area are labelled the same, even if they start 10 or 1 miles apart, and this means that you can't search back to find specific runs anymore. I loved it the way it was - the data is completely devalued if i can't find the activities I'm looking for - place is a lot more memorable than date.
(In cities, the activities were also labelled by council ward and sometimes this seems a bit weird as people don't always know or refer to city ward areas by their name, so i can see that some people might prefer to have city runs labelled by a 'larger' area council descriptor (e.g. Cambridge (City Council) as opposed to (Trumpington (ward)).)
Clearly some people will prefer very localised auto-labelling and some larger scale. Could this not be an option, since Garmin clearly have the ability to apply either form of label and there is already the capacity to chose activity name style in settings?
Adding location based activity titles was my favourite Garmin update, by a long way... now I feel like 90% of my activities might as well titled 'untitled' as they will all have the same name...
the points raised here are why i always manually title my rides by the course and date so for instance High Wycombe Other (auto named) on my ride to work course this morning (3/4/18) would manually be renamed Ride to Work 3/4/18 (This is even more crucial seeing that activities can no longer be searched for by course) So maybe it would be better if there was an option to name them by course
