Please disregard/close: mistaken bug report ("can't add gear")

PubBike You're right, it works for me too.

I guess I got tripped up because gear management appears in two places for an activity:

Next to event type (near the top) and at the bottom-right hand corner of the activity (with the name/icon of your actual gear).

What I don't like is that the second thing disappears when you remove gear. 

Totally my mistake tho.

I think this was a feature request.  You wanted  "Add Gear' or some such to appear in the place where Gear appears because an option to edit gear is normally there and why should you bother looking somewhere else?

I think this is logical and is good UI practice because people expect things to be where they last saw them, and if something disappears, it doesn't mean that people aren't looking there or expecting something to be there.

I expect it disappears because for aesthetic rather than functional reasons.

You could submit it to https://www.garmin.com/en-US/forms/ideas/.

PubBike

I get what you're saying but IMO:
1) "Gear: Add" (near the top of the page) is fairly small and easy to miss if you're not looking for it. In my case it's late at night and I sorta went in with the assumption it was broken, based on the other thread. But if I had read that thread more closely, I would've seen where "Gear: Add" is supposed to be. :/

2) The gear icon/name (bottom-right hand corner) is prominent (assuming you've scrolled to that point)

PubBike said:

You wanted  "Add Gear' or some such to appear in the place where Gear appears because an option to edit gear is normally there and why should you bother looking somewhere else?

Yep, my point exactly. The gear icon/name appears in one place, you have the option to edit gear from there, but once you remove that gear, you have to look somewhere else to add it again. If I change/delete something in one place, it would be nice to be able to add it back from the same place.

All of my activities that have gear are running activities, and for them, gear is added automatically. So I probably haven't pressed the "Gear: Add" link in years, back when GC had a different layout. I'm used to seeing my gear where it is today (at the bottom right-hand corner). So when that "Change Gear" link goes away, it makes me think that I can't add gear anymore.

I'm sure it's for aesthetic reasons, too. My problem is that two things are so far apart that you can't even see them at the same time.

I just don't think there should be two ways to do the same thing, on the same page but separated by a lot of distance (such that you can't even see them at the same time), and one of which disappears completely in some cases. 

It's fine because it's not really a bug, I don't have a better solution (besides displaying the gear name/icon at the top of the page -- but maybe they don't want to clutter it up, although there is a bit of whitespace there), and I don't think they're gonna change it anyway.

In my perfect world, there would be only one place on the page to add/edit/display gear. But it's really not that important.

In contrast, the Strava website displays gear as read-only in the activity summary (near the top -- no need to scroll), along with the mileage on that gear (which is really useful). You edit gear by editing the activity, which is totally logical. Why does Garmin even need a way to "quickly" edit/change certain things (activity type, event type, course, gear) directly from the activity page? It's not like people change those things all the time. It would've be simpler to have all edits available in the Edit page (from the pencil icon).

Just my opinion, but the UX for Strava is a bit better, because it's simpler. (I realize Strava shows a lot less data tho.)

Just look at these forums -- the UX is pretty terrible (try typing an @-mention in front of existing text, or typing it too fast -- the stupid autocomplete popup doesn't come up, and your @-mention doesn't turn into a link or notify anyone.) I just don't think UX has ever been a priority for Garmin, and it's just too bad.

"I just don't think there should be two ways to do the same thing, on the same page but separated by a lot of distance (such that you can't even see them at the same time), and one of which disappears completely in some cases. "

I disagree.  I think there should be several ways to do the same thing to suit different styles of usage which I think was in IBM's original CUA standard.  For example some people prefer to use the keyboard where some prefer the mouse.  Therefore I think ideally it should be possible to tab into that field, to go direct with a shortcut key, and to click on it, and for it to be available wherever it is needed, so both at the top where gear is shown, and under the device where gear is shown.

PubBike

Supporting different modes of input is not the same as having two redundant (and unequal places) to display a clickable "change/add gear" link on the activity page. I'm all for mouse, keyboard and touch being fully supported on every website (this is something I think about a lot in my day job).

I'd argue that it's not needed in both places. Just place the gear at the top where it's prominent -- there might even be room for the icon there.

But who really needs a medium sized icon of a shoe? Just place the gear name, distance (this would be a welcome addition) and if you really want, the "change/add gear link" all at the top. You could even have a smaller icon of a shoe. You could even fit the existing icon there, but it might not look so great.

I really strongly disagree that gear needs to be in two places. By the same argument, literally any of the clickable "edit" links/buttons at the top of the activity page could also be duplicated at the the bottom, or the bottom right, but for some reason it's only the gear. I don't have too much of a problem with some of the summary fields being duplicated, since it kinda makes sense and they're also not clickable. I did notice that Strava doesn't feel the need to duplicate any fields, and I really like their simplicity a lot better (although I always go back to GC for more detail).

Anyway, there's no right or wrong answer here, but my feeling is that it's redundant and confusing. Especially since I don't  see a way to add more than one piece of gear to the same activity -- so having a blue "1" beside "Gear" (at the top) seems really silly to me.when they could just display the name, mileage, a smaller icon, and an add/edit button or link, right at the top.

EDIT: Maybe it's just running activities which don't support more than one piece of gear? I dunno.

WillNorthYork said:

Especially since I don't  see a way to add more than one piece of gear to the same activity

You can add as many pieces of gear as you like to an activity.

PubBike

fair enough. That's what I originally thought. I only have one unretired piece of gear. I did try creating a random "other' gear but it didn't show up for running activities.

But I think this is an example of making the UI worse to support a feature that may not be used by many ppl (or many runners at least) -- multiple gear for one activity.

Maybe they could've displayed one piece of gear at the top, and let you click to see more.

WillNorthYork said:

a feature that may not be used by many ppl

Do you know for a fact what the typical usage of this feature is?  In my case my commuter bike has 5 pieces of gear by default.

If you include which HR strap, sensor, shoes, footpod etc. then even as a runner you'll have plenty of gear.

PubBike

Okay, fair enough! I guess I shouldn't just look at my own use case -- that's a little selfish. As far as strap, footpod, etc. go, I would never want to manage that gear myself -- that's the kind of thing I would expect Garmin to do for me, since they should know what sensors wrote data to the FIT file.

I don't think it's a bug -- it was totally my fault that I missed it, especially since I'm sure I've seen the "Gear: Add" link before. I just don't like the way that the 2nd place to edit gear goes away when you remove the last piece of gear. I realize it would look kind of stupid to have "add/change gear" floating around there for no reason, but maybe that just says they should rethink the way it's done. Why not have a big "+" icon there with an "add gear" caption. It would match the medium-sized shoe icon that I normally see.

I stand by my assertion that Garmin doesn't care about UX. The new forum has so many issues, and it doesn't even work 100% on mobile (which I thought was a huge reason for moving to a new platform). There's not only bugs/UX issues in GC Web, but also in GCM. Pace graphs are scaled differently in GCM vs. GC Web -- GC Web's graphs are useless if you have periods of rest or moving slowly. I could go on and on....

EDIT: e.g. I was trying to edit this comment, and the entire edit box just suddenly disappeared.