Or Is There a Good Reason Garmin Chose to Not Consistently Use Time Units in Its Web UI?

Usually when implementing good or at least consistent design practices in developing websites and apps with at least one eye on user experience, developers adhere to a single standard units - for example time duration units. This is generally done to provide for a positive user experience, reduce user interaction errors, increase retention of time and such.

I noticed workout duration units in Garmins calendar are in the format of "HH:MM"

But just one click away over in the Garmin Coach Plans tab the exact same workout is shown as "XXX Minutes"

And it's left as an exercise for the user to detect the presence/absence of the ":" and to 'do the math' as it were.

So for example the calendar might show a "2:15" run but click once over to plans and you see the same run as "135 minutes".

Users being what we are - inconsistent usage of time duration units potentially facilitates users confusing durations like say "215 minutes" or wait, didn't I just see somewhere it was actually "an hour and thirty five minutes?" ... click click ... What? Wait?

I know Garmin isn't always consistent across platforms - but I would've hoped for consistence usage of units within say just the website.

0 FlowState 2 months ago

All-numerical date formats aren't consistent in the website either. In some places, the date format follows your Connect display preferences, and other places, the date format follows your browser/UI. This is especially annoying since the display preferences only have 3 choices, all of which use "/" as a separator, whereas various real life date formats use "/", "." or "-", meaning that unless you live in the US or Canada, your Connect display preferences date format probably won't match your browser date format.

0 5097815 2 months ago in reply to FlowState

Interesting. Yeah that's another one. Date format should be correctly internationalized with user configurability that should be consistently in sync across all platforms. First - I would say they need to use units/measurements/formats consistently within a given platform. Second - the various dev teams (web, app, device) need to talk and agree on standardization. And ultimately have a meta config function they all agree on that syncs configs across platforms.

OK I've vented enough over annoyances. Sure, I get annoyed having to clear cache manually every week on my Connect app on Android to recover missing/hidden app functionality. But to balance my complaint...

...Let me add that my Forerunner is great (albeit it's been replaced a couple times) and the Connect app and site provide a lot of super helpful data. It wasn't that long ago I didn't have any of this. My pre-Forerunner days? I just had an old Timex and would hit the stopwatch timer.

0 FlowState 2 months ago in reply to 5097815

5097815 said:
Second - the various dev teams (web, app, device) need to talk and agree on standardization.

Haha Canadians have been asking for mixed units (metric and statute) in Connect for 10+ years now, but Garmin has steadfastly ignored us. (In Canada, we use km for distance but pounds for most measures of weight, including barbells / dumbbells.)

But mixed units have been possible on the devices themselves for a long time (maybe since the beginning idk.)

So it's annoying to enter weights for strength training in lbs on the device, but if you need to edit weights in Connect, it's in kg.

Consistency is def not Garmin's strong suit. In one area of the Connect app (pairing a device), Fenix is rendered 3 different ways: "Fenix", "fenix" and "fēnix", leading "fenix 8" to be sorted before "fēnix 3" in an alphabetical list of devices.