Just wanted to thank and congratulate Garmin for releasing some much appreciated updates for the Swimming activity, I am an avid swimmer for passion and work as a UX designer so sorry for the nerdy feedback but I just need to get it out :
- Picking the pool size before a workout, this is great still need to test it 100% and some messages are a bit deceiving as if you were not supposed to change the pool size after creating the workout from the watch, I'm talking about when have previously set the pool size to a different size compared to the workout you are trying to start as opposed to starting a workout with the sqame pool size as the one of the last activity... sounds a bit convoluted but the simple solutions would be to just remove the setting, pool size, altogether from the workout page and let the watch do the math right after you click "do workout" a prompt would appear letting you select the pool size... Otherwise another way around it is to give 3 options (25m,50m or pool size prompt) in pool size options.
- The explicited target pace in the workout step is also great, so it's not hidden or make us write it down as note (as I had to do before )
I also seen an alert the 1st time I started a swimming workout after 20.32 update, saying every time I finish a step I need to press the lap button to start the next one... This goes just the opposite as I hoped and suggested, I don't know if it is a technical limitation of the swimming activity but is straight up bad design and very limiting as a swimming watch enforcing to lap each step since we can already add a rest with lap to go to next step... so why limiting the possibility for example to do consecutive main sets at different target paces, with no pauses or need to press the lap button in between .... it seems to me a very simple thing, but again if it's a technical limitation of how the swimming activity is built I understand and hope somehow you will eventually find a workaround or solution because the use case for the final user is definitely there.
Also I have a question about the intesity target option "Effort-based" I tested some time but I really don't understand how for example the "ascending" "descending" sub option is gonna work... because intuitevely I would imagine I set a certain distance and time and I'm supposed to "ascend" or "descend" my effort, which in itself sounds also really nice and useful... but how exactly is this gonna pan out as interaction while I'm swimming, eg for targets of course we have the vibration as I at the time I should hit the wall.
Also about target pace a better implementation, of course more taxing in terms of calculations would be if it was possible to reset the alert everytime you touch the wall, this would make much more sense as you would have a feedback of how slow you have been in the current length not the simple addition of all the times... and I mean the current kind of static "pace/metronome" is still better than nothing but it could be improved!