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Gamin Connect Graphs - how to make them useful

blysta
over 3 years ago

Hi there,

Could you please redesign the Garmin Connect graphs.  I honestly wonder if anyone who coded them tries to use them.  Following are issues, and possible solution.  Issues:

 - The vertical axis is so small as to be useless.

 - Having the graphs all displayed one underneath each other means by the time you can see all the information line graphs, the GPS trace is gone off the top of the screen so you can't see it any more.

 - Why on earth does the elevation graph start at -100m??  That's 100m below sea level.  Funnily enough all of the cycling and running I do is above sea level.  So any meaningful information is lost in the ripples on top of this.

- You GPS map zooms in and out on mouse roll = you can't naturally roll the webpage up and down with the mouse wheel because you get stuck in map zoom in/zoom out.

--->> Here is an example of a competitors graph that is really useful  --->>

Everything is overlaid on each other.  If it gets cluttered you can enable/disable HR/Elevation/Speed/Cadence by clicking on what you want displayed. See the little radio buttons at the top right of graph.

You can drag over a section of the line graphs and it will expand to that section only for the full width of graph so you can see a section in more detail.

Their GPS map is right above it and like yours the dot does move along where you are.  Just on theirs you can see the GPS map because you haven't had to scroll down so far to see the all the information on graph after individual graph, that the map has long since disappeared off the top of the screen..

It would be wonderful if you could try and make the rest of the connect graphing useful in this way.  My family has had garmins only for many generations of watch and love them, just have had to rely on 3rd party sites for functional training analysis and would love it if you could update this component.  It would only lock people into your ecosystem more!

Thanks, Blysta

PS on a positive note, I like the heat color of the GPS trace on your map - that's really cool. 

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  • 0 over 3 years ago
    blysta said:
     - Having the graphs all displayed one underneath each other means by the time you can see all the information line graphs, the GPS trace is gone off the top of the screen so you can't see it any more.

    Open one of the graphs in the Full Size mode (see the double-arrow symbol top right on the graph), and there you can enable overlays of other graphs)

    blysta said:
    Why on earth does the elevation graph start at -100m?? 

    It is not necessarily the case. The lower and upper limits just fit the closest 100m values. In my case for example, the graph uses the range 100m - 300m

    blysta said:
    You GPS map zooms in and out on mouse roll = you can't naturally roll the webpage up and down with the mouse wheel because you get stuck in map zoom in/zoom out.

    Keep the mouse cursor on the side of the page (not over the map), and you'll be able to scroll the page without problems.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to trux

    Thanks for the response trux.

    trux said:
    Open one of the graphs in the Full Size mode (see the double-arrow symbol top right on the graph), and there you can enable overlays of other graphs)

    That's great, but you lose the map to do so.  Why not have them all on one screen like this:

    Then you can see where on the map you were.  This was actually a hills session, but all in the range of 0-100m.  The elevation graph here is so much clearer by not including the 100m below sea level.

    From same session on Garmin which adds on the 100m under sea level the hills become more of a ripple (this is where I can see the map on Garmin above this just not shown here):

    When you expand the graphs as you have shown - thanks - it is a bit clearer for sure.  BUT, you have lost the map  = where is what hill now?  To use this I have to memorize the route and know what hill was what, which is not a great UX.

    trux said:
    Keep the mouse cursor on the side of the page (not over the map), and you'll be able to scroll the page without problems.

    Thanks, and yes I did work that out funnily enough :-)  But am suggesting you may want to rethink this as a solution = "just move the mouse somewhere else and you'll be ok".  Design thinking is one of the current tech philosophies, and that sounds like a workaround not a better design.  Because you have all the graphs horizontally down the screen, you HAVE to scroll = you use the mouse wheel = every time you are saying the user has to move the mouse somewhere else.  When you already have scaled the map so the workout is on it, it would be rare that the first thing someone wants to do is zoom in on the map.

    Garmin has the foundations built better than anyone, and provides just amazing running stats with L/R step balance information, brilliant watches etc.  But the final presentation seems to stumble.  It does contain all the information, but there are more effective ways of presenting it.

    Is this the right place to try and suggest updates to interfaces?

  • +1 over 3 years ago in reply to blysta
    blysta said:
    Is this the right place to try and suggest updates to interfaces?

    Not really. This is a user forum for mutual help. Rather use the form at Submitting an Idea to Garmin