Acknowledged
CIQQA-3778

Usability issue: when editing an activity data field, simply scrolling through the CIQ fields produces intrusive "use open connection?" prompts if any of them use ANT+

I reported this before, but it still exists and it's still extremely annoying, so I'm reporting it again.

Device: Forerunner 955 (WW)

Firmware: 27.09

Reproduction:

- Install one more data fields to the watch which make an ANT+ connection without using the new-ish "native pairing process", such as Stryd Zones and Auxiliary Heart Rate. I would link to them but it seems that Garmin doesn't want us to use the web store anymore. Do not add them to an activity yet (don't use the new setup process which prompts you to add fields to an activity.)

- Just for funsies, install a few more data fields (some of which don't make any ANT+ connections)

- Edit an activity which has no CIQ data fields

- Go to an existing data page and edit one of the fields (long press the field)

- Scroll to Connect IQ and select it

- Now try to scroll through the list (without even selecting any of the items)

- As you scroll past any of the ANT+ data fields, an intrusive full-screen prompt will pop up asking you if you want to make an open connection to [ANT+ ID]

Not only is this extremely annoying, it makes it very hard to scroll past or even select those data fields. As soon as you dismiss the prompt, it will appear again. You have to quickly dismiss the prompt and scroll away from the field.

Note that this is obviously happening because with this workflow, when you scroll to a data field, a live preview of the field is displayed. In order to do so, the CIQ data field has to run, which includes making ANT+ connections / discovering ANT+ devices.

It's funny that if you add a new data page, the initial field setup process doesn't have this problem, since it has a completely different UI (full-screen menu instead of short little popover) with no live preview.

I would suggest maybe disabling the live previews for CIQ data fields?

Or maybe this is intentional, to "encourage" CIQ devs to use the new native pairing process. Well all I can say is, Stryd, a for-profit company hasn't do so yet, and maybe never will? Not to mention all the old apps which probably won't be updated to do so.

I would bet this applies to all watches of the same-ish gen (like FR255, FR265, FR965, Fenix 7 / Fenix 7 Pro). Wouldn't be surprised if it also applies to the newer gen devices like Fenix 8.

flowstate

  • Annoying indeed.

    It won't be easy to fix it though. Probably the real fix would be to talk to the Garmin layers again, and see if the whole thing could be relaxed a bit, and instead of being on the safe side with everything do what's OK, but does what's best for the users.

    But if we're talking about CIQ, then maybe adding a new getter to AppBase could be used: getPreviewView(). If it was overridden then it's view would be used. Then CIQ developers could move the ANT/BLE initialization from the app's initialize or onStart to the getInitialView() method.

    As a user I do prefer to see some view (as opposed to just the name of the field), it's especially useful when you added a field and then you change the layout and see how it reacts in real time.

  • I will admit that I'm half of the problem here: my instinct for that kind of prompt is to answer No (or dismiss it), which is probably the opposite of 99% of users (who are conditioned to answer Yes).

    I still think it's super annoying.

  • To be clear I don't have a problem with seeing this prompt if I explicitly add an affected CIQ field to an activity.

    If I scroll to *and* select Stryd Zones, then I immediately see the "use open connection?" prompt, then I can make the logical connection that this message is related to Stryd Zones. The prompt is also not preventing me from doing anything else I was trying to do at the time, like scroll to *another* data field.

    I do have a problem if it appears:

    - just as I scroll past an affected CIQ field

    - if I open an activity which has an affected CIQ field

    One of the problems with the prompt is that it's extremely vague and has 0 context, especially when it appears "implicitly" (as in the 2 above examples). Another problem is that it's interrupting whatever I was trying to do. The third problem is if I dismiss it, it comes back immediately.

    "But why don't you just answer yes to the prompt?"

    Yeah, maybe that would work, but why should I do that when the prompt is being displayed for a data field I didn't even want to select in the first place? Maybe I *don't* want to use an open connection for that data field since I don't want to use that data field in the first place.

    If the prompt isn't meant to be dismissed (or answered in the negative), I would suggest it's worse than useless. It's like those old 3rd-party firewall "allow this app to access the internet???" prompts which endlessly nagged users and trained them to answer "yes" / "allow" to every prompt (which meant that the prompts were worse than useless - if at any time a prompt actually indicated a real problem, users would just answer "yes" / "allow" anyway)

    As it stands, it seems like the prompt has just been thrown in as a response to EU legislation without any real thought to usability or usefulness.