tile & firmware improvements

[DeNachtwacht]

Hi guys,

I'm just wondering what you would change or improve on the band 2 firmware or tiles.

Personally I'd love to see:
- the band as a notification band and not a typing device. Remove sms typing, or at least don't add this feature to facebook/mail. Typing is an example of something you don't want to do on such a small display and in my opinion one of the most important reasons why iWatch and Android Wear devices are failing right now. In my opinion the band philosophy should be that the device is a multisensor device that measures & displays things faster & better than a smartphone, and not more than that.
- instead, add a few fast replies to email/sms/facebook/whatsapp like "ok!" "I contact you soon, I'm in a meeting etc.". Just like the fast replies you can send in response to incoming phonecalls now.
- display notifications of new messages/calls on watch mode (just like glimp on windows phone)
- add battery percentage (or colored battery symbol red >0% - orange >25% - yellow >50% -green >75%)
- clear the notification tiles on the phone if I have read the messages on the band, and vice versa. Right now, the band notifications are handy but the result is that you have to clear a lot of message notifications on two devices. Not necessary and only irritating...
- remove the settings menu from the band and add it to the microsoft health app. Much easier to organize it, now there is even a settings menu within the settings menu.
- stop notifications during a workout or activity. No one wants to be disturbed during a training and it saves battery life, so I'll see only advantages here.

 

[devbent]

Hi DeNachtwacth,

Thank you for the feedback!

The Keyboard is always optional to use, you can customize quick replies in the phone app if you prefer them. I use a mix, the keyboard is great for short replies when I don't want to pull out my phone and want a short reply that I didn't think of including in my Quick Replies.

Replies to other types of messaging is high on our to-do list, but it is really hard to get working cross platform. The same is true for clearing notification tiles on the phone, we really wanted to do this from Day 1, but until recently none of the phone APIs allowed for it! Now limited support exists on some platforms, but what we can do on each phone platform is different. Until we can do it right, we don't want to confuse people by clearing some messages and not clearing others, we feel that not clearing any makes it so that user know exactly what will happen every time. That said, phone APIs are just about at the point where this can be done reasonably well in the majority of circumstances, so we'll probably re-evaluate it soon.

The settings menu a common point of contention within the team. We want some settings available on the band, especially those settings that are useful when the user's phone is not around. We also wanted settings that are very much "for this device" to live on the device. But too many settings on the device makes for a confusing UI where it is hard to find the setting you want. IMHO we have already passed that line, but I am also of the opinion that every settings
menu ever made grows until it becomes confusing.

Finally, we've been trying to solve the problem of notifications in an activity for awhile. For some people, getting notifications during a workout is incredibly important, jobs that require 100% availability (e.g. Doctors) are one example. But for others, they don't want their gym time interrupted.

The issue is that this needs to be settable when the user starts the activity, we just haven't thought of a really great way to make that possible without adding Yet Another Switch in the tile. We also don't want to have a dialog every time an activity is started. Unfortunately it is proving to be a vexing UX problem. (From a technical side it is really easy for us to do!)

All that said, every request we get for a feature ups the priority of us doing the feature, so again, thank you for your well thought out feedback!

 

[DeNachtwacht]

Ah ok I didn't know you guys were active here but that's great to see. And thanks for the fast and detailed reply! Anyway I think you're doing great things with the band, keep up the good work.

 

[DeNachtwacht]

I?ve got another idea for facebook messenger & messages.
Add a 15 minute notification stop for incoming messages from the same person after you?ve received the first one or two. It?s really annoying to be in a conversation with the same person and constantly feeling your band vibrate and displaying messages you also see on the smartphone right in front of you at the same time...

 

[DroidUser42]

Finally, we've been trying to solve the problem of notifications in an activity for awhile. For some people, getting notifications during a workout is incredibly important, jobs that require 100% availability (e.g. Doctors) are one example. But for others, they don't want their gym time interrupted.

I'd think that would be a "global" preference setting. Alternatively, it could be a the same menu where you turn the GPS on/off when you start an exercise. It's there if you want it, but not in the way for everyone else. The one under the exercise tile could default to the preference, so you only have to access it if you want to override your preference one-time.

 

[devbent]

I'd think that would be a "global" preference setting. Alternatively, it could be a the same menu where you turn the GPS on/off when you start an exercise. It's there if you want it, but not in the way for everyone else. The one under the exercise tile could default to the preference, so you only have to access it if you want to override your preference one-time.

Those are two of the places we are looking at.

What we really want to know is if the majority of users fall into two buckets, "Never want notifications during activities" and "Always want notifications during activities". If this is true than a simple toggle switch works, though then I have to figure out if we make it per activity or global to all activities, which consists of trying to figure out which one will result in less support calls!

But if there is as significant portion of users that want notifications on sometimes, then life gets tricky, since designing for that is much harder.

If we implement something with a bad UX we will get support calls and even returns. Missing one important call because a toggle switch's default behavior wasn't planned out well is a horrible experience.

UI work is interesting that way. If something does not exist, there aren't really expectations around it. However once we implement a new feature, people have expectations for how it should work, and they will be disappointed (upset, full of rage, etc!) if that new feature isn't done quite right.

This thread has inspired me though, I'll put a request out to our internal user group asking people for their preference in regards to notifications during exercises. If people fall primarily into two buckets than the complexity of this feature drops way down.

 

[DroidUser42]

then I have to figure out if we make it per activity or global to all activities, which consists of trying to figure out which one will result in less support calls!

I'm going to suggest another idea: Make the setting per activity (type) and it remembers the last setting. (No global setting.) I think that's how GPS works now. That way you can block interruptions for your bike ride, but get them during walking.

If people fall primarily into two buckets than the complexity of this feature drops way down.

I predict 3-4 buckets: All, none, phone call only, phone call and SMS. Anything beyond that would be harder to set up. And may require working with the phone's features (like a VIP list - people who can get though even if in a "do not disturb" state.)

But then we have to start asking about the definition of a "phone call". Does that include things like WhatsApp?

 

[driedl]

This is a fun discussion. You must enjoy your job, devbent. My hunch is that two buckets would suffice. Notifications on or off during exercise. I agree that each exercise needs to be treated separately, though. Like DroidUser42, I don't mind looking at my Band when I run but I don't think it's safe when I'm on my bike. I'd rather have this setting on my Band than on my phone and I'd like to see it next to the ability to turn on the GPS for each activity as we discussed in another thread.

 

[DeNachtwacht]

This thread has inspired me though, I'll put a request out to our internal user group asking people for their preference in regards to notifications during exercises. If people fall primarily into two buckets than the complexity of this feature drops way down.

I think it really depends on the activity for most people. While running or doing exercises most people won't like notifications I guess, and for that one occation when grandma is in the hospital in bad conditions you'd want to switch notifications on for just this one time. However when I'm cycling to work with GPS activity tracking, I would prefer notifications to come in as default. I don't know if there are people here who think different about it, but I'd say it's really something that depends on the activity you're doing.

Respect for the tough decision you guys have to make, when I read your responses they constantly remind me of how everyone has different preferences and how hard it is to create even the simplest switch button that will be liked by the majority of people...

 

[Alexander Long]

I love the typing , so please DO NOT remove that.
But I do wish to add more tile space capacity, 12 tiles are too few, should allow at least 20, especially consider each activity is in separate tile. I have no space left for any third party tiles.

 

[snakies]

I personally like the keyboard. I find it very fast and convinient to type out quick replies.
I would love the ability as a developer to send custom layout notifications. I am an app developer and use custom layouts on the Band, but when I set a page to my tile using a custom layout, the user has to navigate to my tile and open it in order to see the page. Why not act like a notification and just popup on the screen??? paging devbent

 

[devbent]

I personally like the keyboard. I find it very fast and convinient to type out quick replies.
I would love the ability as a developer to send custom layout notifications. I am an app developer and use custom layouts on the Band, but when I set a page to my tile using a custom layout, the user has to navigate to my tile and open it in order to see the page. Why not act like a notification and just popup on the screen??? paging devbent

This feature kept getting pushed back, but we are well aware of its need!

We're probably not going to have completely custom notification dialogs, due to how we handle memory. Right now on boot we allocate a notification dialog and keep it around as a singleton, when someone needs to populate the dialog its contents are just filled in and the dialog is shown. This is a gross simplification, but the general idea is that we have one dialog of an already known size. This lets us keep assurances about our memory usage.

If you've used the layout stuff, then you know how easy it is to run out of memory using them, and how poor of a job we do alerting you to this. It is also fairly inconsistent, we cannot provide good guidelines because custom layouts are one place where we don't do really super strict book keeping of what objects have what allocation cost.

Until we fix that mess, custom dialogs would suffer from the same uncertainty issues, but even worse. Right now when a third party tile is gone into, the heap is in a known state, so you know that if your layout works on your band that it'll work on customer's bands. For dialogs, the user may be in an activity with lots of UI elements on it that use up more heap, and your dialog could fail to show.

Thus the pre-allocation.

We could always reserve X heap for a custom dialog, but until we fix our communications around what objects use what amount of memory and what the limits are, there is no way to tell developers what that limit really means.

That said we definitely want to make dialogs more powerful. Our wish list for dialog improvements is a mile long!

We've spoken to some developers and gathered some requirements, but if you have any ideas for what you'd specifically like please do reply!

 

[mkg3]

- the band as a notification band and not a typing device......instead, add a few fast replies to email/sms/facebook/whatsapp like "ok!" "I contact you soon, I'm in a meeting etc.". Just like the fast replies you can send in response to incoming phonecalls now.
- display notifications of new messages/calls on watch mode (just like glimp on windows phone)
- add battery percentage (or colored battery symbol red >0% - orange >25% - yellow >50% -green >75%)
- clear the notification tiles on the phone if I have read the messages on the band, and vice versa. Right now, the band notifications are handy but the result is that you have to clear a lot of message notifications on two devices. Not necessary and only irritating...
- remove the settings menu from the band and add it to the microsoft health app. Much easier to organize it, now there is even a settings menu within the settings menu.
- stop notifications during a workout or activity. No one wants to be disturbed during a training and it saves battery life, so I'll see only advantages here.

These are good.

Band as notification on wrist is really great. I've come to rely on this feature since Band 1. Since I'm an iPh user, never seen the keyboard and don't need it. Canned quick reply maybe nice but I don't use that feature on my iPh so I probably won't use it on B2 either...but the idea is good.

Wonder how many people use the watch mode (I do not) - I do not know what it issue is?....

Battery indicator in % or color is nice I suppose. Showing % or color, where it goes red at 10% left or something like it should be enough, given that there is a graphic indicator already.

Maybe keep the display as is and if you tap on the battery indicator, it goes full screen and gives detailed status?

Keep the settings menu on Band.

I fall in the category of wanting to be notified during workouts. Its very helpful that I don't have to keep checking my phone for those things periodically. I workout 5~6 days/wk so not getting notification adds up to bit of time. Vast majority of the time, its not urgent but there have been few times that I needed to respond immediately - it really helps.

I like to add that it would be convenient if the tiles can be accessed by sliding up or down as well as side-to-side. Currently, one has to swipe multiple times to get to the end of tile set. If we had say 3x3 (3 tiles across/screen + up (3 more tiles) + down (3 more tiles)) for 9 tiles, accessing any tile of interest would be much faster. This capability would add more tile to the Band too, so if you had 9 tiles per set, one could have 18 or 27 (though I can't imagine why anyone would need that many tiles). This would be something that you arrange on MS Health app on the phone and sync.

 

[devbent]

I like to add that it would be convenient if the tiles can be accessed by sliding up or down as well as side-to-side. Currently, one has to swipe multiple times to get to the end of tile set. If we had say 3x3 (3 tiles across/screen + up (3 more tiles) + down (3 more tiles)) for 9 tiles, accessing any tile of interest would be much faster. This capability would add more tile to the Band too, so if you had 9 tiles per set, one could have 18 or 27 (though I can't imagine why anyone would need that many tiles). This would be something that you arrange on MS Health app on the phone and sync.

We played around with this a bit. You could set all your messaging tiles on one row and activity tiles on another row, and we had a few other divisions as well.

The problem is many users (such as myself!) don't necessarily remember which row to look on. A solution to this was color coding each row some very distinct color, which would have made theme customization a lot more... interesting. What to do about the wallpaper was another one, does each row get its own wallpaper? When the screen comes back on, which row do we default to? A lot of questions like these got raised.

In the end, the occasional gains in navigation speed were determined not to be worth the loss in navigation speed whenever someone forgot where their desired tile was at.

Another issue is how to let the user know that scrolling vertically was possible, having a symmetrical peak on top and bottom wasn't ideal, it was not obvious that scrolling is possible (one proposed solution, always start on the top row). If we combined the peak with theme color differences than ensuring all the colors looked good together means theming would be more complicated.

It never got past story boarding, but it did look really cool.

 

[mkg3]

We played around with this a bit. You could set all your messaging tiles on one row and activity tiles on another row, and we had a few other divisions as well.

The problem is.................When the screen comes back on, which row do we default to? A lot of questions like these got raised.

In the end, the occasional gains in navigation speed were determined not to be worth the loss in navigation speed whenever someone forgot where their desired tile was at......

It never got past story boarding, but it did look really cool.

Thanks for the reply.

I think you have to always default to the middle row, in my description, since anything else adds the additional swipe and lose the whole point of faster access.

Currently, I have my tiles grouped as you've described so I can quickly swipe across however many times to get to set of tiles.

Completely understand about it can be confusing and potentially a mess for someone who has a different approach to things.

Maybe you guys can think about it again when more apps become available by 3rd party developers and enough feedback piles up in this area....

 

[devbent]

Maybe you guys can think about it again when more apps become available by 3rd party developers and enough feedback piles up in this area....

This is why feedback and votes on Uservoice are always appreciated! It helps us know where to focus our energies next.

 

[DeNachtwacht]

Is there a specific reason why the Run and Cycle tiles use the same custom split marker. You can set this in the Cycling tile but for cycling, I want 5 or 10 kilometers, while for running 1 kilometer is perfect.

In general, I hope the running app will be improved a lot. What you'd want as a professional runner is all kinds of training schemes (a lot like the custom workout planner actually). For example, the possibility to setup a scheme like this:
5 times the following exercise: 400 sprinting at max speed, 200 meter walking, 1 minute rest.

Right now the Band 2 can't compete with the professional Garmin devices only because of the software.

 

[HomeBound12]

Am I allowed to chime in?

Ok, here is what I'd do:
- Utilize swipe right more. (Right now it just show us battery and bluetooth)
What to change?
Give us the options to have screens that we want when we swipe RIGHT.
(WHY do we have to swipe LEFT and tap on the weather tile to see current weather? Why not give us the option to swipe RIGHT and see weather forecast right away if we want?)
Or music controls... swipe right: music controls. Just imagine: put the headphones, swipe right, hit play.
(Garmin VivoSmart HR does this and I think it's brilliant)
Swipe right "screens" would be open to customization just like tiles are currently.
(I like to think of it in terms "small tile" and "big tile" if you want...)

- Why can't we customize time screen more? If we want weather there: why not?
- Want to see battery level there? Why not?
- 2nd time zone on time screen? Sure.
- Want last heart rate reading there? Absolutely.
- Last UV reading? Sure.
- Missed notifications? Yea. After all why would we NOT have a option to see number of missed notifications when we check the time?
Limit this to one or 2 pieces of info. Give us options so we can go nuts personalizing it.
If this creates battery hit that's fine: let us decide if we want to go that route or not.

- Add customization and "one tap" function to time screen. Just imagine: simply tap once on time screen (once it's on)
and start music (if you want).
Or tap to see the weather (if you want).
Or pick the app you want to start with one tap on the time screen.

Hope this helps.

 

[snakies]

This feature kept getting pushed back, but we are well aware of its need!

We're probably not going to have completely custom notification dialogs, due to how we handle memory. Right now on boot we allocate a notification dialog and keep it around as a singleton, when someone needs to populate the dialog its contents are just filled in and the dialog is shown. This is a gross simplification, but the general idea is that we have one dialog of an already known size. This lets us keep assurances about our memory usage.

If you've used the layout stuff, then you know how easy it is to run out of memory using them, and how poor of a job we do alerting you to this. It is also fairly inconsistent, we cannot provide good guidelines because custom layouts are one place where we don't do really super strict book keeping of what objects have what allocation cost.

Until we fix that mess, custom dialogs would suffer from the same uncertainty issues, but even worse. Right now when a third party tile is gone into, the heap is in a known state, so you know that if your layout works on your band that it'll work on customer's bands. For dialogs, the user may be in an activity with lots of UI elements on it that use up more heap, and your dialog could fail to show.

Thus the pre-allocation.

We could always reserve X heap for a custom dialog, but until we fix our communications around what objects use what amount of memory and what the limits are, there is no way to tell developers what that limit really means.

That said we definitely want to make dialogs more powerful. Our wish list for dialog improvements is a mile long!

We've spoken to some developers and gathered some requirements, but if you have any ideas for what you'd specifically like please do reply!

I completely understand what you are saying. I think that giving developers a memory limit to stay under and reserving X heap for custom dialogs would be a viable solution. I had a heck of a time trying to figure out custom layouts and why they would work sometimes and not other times (when they dont work, they just decide to not appear at all). I couldnt find any help online on how to implement them correctly but ultimately figured it out. Is the memory limits also the reason why my text strings get cut-off after a certain length? Do you know if there are any other 3rd party band apps in the store that use custom layouts other than mine (Chancy Band)?

 

[devbent]

Is there a specific reason why the Run and Cycle tiles use the same custom split marker. You can set this in the Cycling tile but for cycling, I want 5 or 10 kilometers, while for running 1 kilometer is perfect.

From a band perspective, Run does not have custom split markers. I just checked the code to make sure, during runs our manager for split notifications is hard coded to be at either 1 kilometer or 1 mile.

Is this something you are seeing in the App when viewing your runs?