Gear's Thoughts: User Interface Overhaul

Back in August, we launched part 1 of a series of upcoming user interface enhancements.  Designed to tackle some of our biggest complaints, we've been working very hard to streamline and simplify our app, while not taking away from the power and usefulness you've come to expect from us.  The August update was fairly subtle and only affected the Calendar, but our next site update will bring many changes to the navigation, calendar and dashboard, the cornerstones of our product.  Fear not!  Though the changes have been a huge undertaking for our development team, they will feel natural to you, and I'm quite confident you won't be lost upon your first login.  

Our key design goal was to bring navigation, contextual awareness and task representation to a more simple, obvious and "un-layered" clarity for our customers.  Huh?  Lets just say, this ain't your Grandma's TrainingPeaks anymore.. and I think she'll be able to use it now too!

Change is hard right?  Well, I don't think this will be too tough, let me show you what we've done.  I've summarized the changes in a screenshot included below.  But the main highlights include:

• Eliminated the 3 right-side tabs of Calendar, Spreadsheet and Dashboard by consolidating them into the left-side icon navigation
• Added text descriptors to each navigation icon
• The Spreadsheet view is now simply a view option of the Calendar, called "List"
• There is now a Calendar icon which acts as the "take me home" button in the navigation bar
• Workout, meal & food libraries are condensed into an expandable menu attached to the Calendar navigation icon
• Date navigator is easier to use with bigger buttons, especially useful when using a tablet
• Fonts are clearer and larger
• No more confusion from "left side" and "right side" functionality where the left-side items don't match the functionality of the right-side of the application
• Removed the traditional "week view" from the Calendar
• Weekly summary no longer shows "planned" or "completed" information if there is no planned or completed time/distance data

 Click the image to get a full-screen view

Because we are constantly evaluating and working to make TrainingPeaks easier and better to use, we sometimes have to realize that certain features or functions either stink, or just never get used like we hope. One feature that is getting the axe with this update is the "week view".  Originally designed to be an hourly overview of your day, it saw little use and was difficult to support.  Ultimately, it just didn't add enough value to the experience, and we've added features in the QuickView, and to the main view of the Calendar that make the need for the hourly overview rather pointless.  I'm sure some of you love it, but we've decided to remove it. Instead, you can configure your regular Calendar view to show just 1 week, which will achieve most of the traditional week-view's functionality.

We've also cleaned up the Dashboard by moving the controls for adding charts right on the Dashboard itself.  Did you say charts?  What about Pods?  If you've been paying close attention, we've always tried to use the more generic term of "pods" as the descriptor of what  you can add to your Dashboard.  Well, we've given up on that, and lets just call them charts. Same features, same idea, just a more appropriate name.

Click the image to get a full-screen view

You can see above there is now a dropdown selector to add a new chart, just click and drag a new chart onto the Dashboard.  This change is an example of improved "context-sensitive task representation", that's for the UX nerds, yes, we pay attention to that stuff in between our workouts and recovery drinks.

I have to point out again, notice there are no more tabs!  Simple, simple, simple. There is just one way to navigate now, using the left-side icon bar.

Look for these changes to happen on our next site update in the coming weeks. As always, we appreciate your feedback and look forward to helping you train for your events by creating the world's best training software.  Let us know what you'd like us to work on by submitting a feature request.

Thanks for reading!

-Gear, CEO

Comments

[Rodney]

I like the UI changes and put in place slowly it is easier to manage the change. One thing I'd like to see is the addition of a button in the TP Agent desktop software.

After the workouts are saved I have to click OK, then Login, and then go back and close TP Agent. From a UI perspective this three step process should be one, two at the most. I shouldn't have to click OK, it should just say success/fail and the upload dialog closes after a short delay (2-3 seconds if upload succeeded). Rather than just a Login button, a Login and Exit TP Agent button should be present so I don't need to go back and close the TP Agent seperately.

[Greg]

Generally this all looks great. But I have some helpful comments and a question:

- will you be fixing the UI inconsistencies before launch:

- there's a mix of rounded and square edged icons
- likewise the if you are using rounded icons the dialog boxes should also be rounded

These aren't material to the applications use, but it is sloppy and at the same time perfectly acceptable for an unreleased product.

- when can we expect the full TP application to function on an iPad/iOS. I live in hope you can port TP with Adobe Flash Builder to iOS in the interim.

Irrespective of your mobile strategy A broad statement of intent and the direction of TP one way or the other would be very helpful. I feel it's been a while since we've had that. No one expects you to pre announce features etc, but the direction is a reasonable request.

If my tones seems a little negative, it isn't. I love TP. Performance measurement, management and prediction is changing fast. Our expectations of mobile computing are not what they were 12-18 months ago. I'm just a little unclear as to how TP is going to address these things.

[trainingpeaks]

Good suggestion on Device Agent. We have a ways to go to get DA to be what we really want it to be, like, automatically checking with the web to see which workouts are truly "new". Auto-closing the success/fail dialog is a great suggestion. I like the notion of closing DA upon login too, that's handy.

We are working on making the UI elements more consistent, like rounded vs. square. You'll see we went with rounded in the final release.

As for iPad, try iSwifter. You'll realize though that while our app is quite usable on a tablet, it's not 100% designed to only be used on a tablet. In other words, 1024x768, and sometimes 1024x600 is just not enough real estate. I hope Adobe makes an easy conversion tool.. that would be nice. But, the reality is, we are working on a more "dedicated" approach, with HTML5 as the core. Our mobile app has a native Objective-C wrapper around an HTML5 web-app. Suffice to say, we're working hard to ensure you have the right functionality for the screen you want, at the right time.

[Bob]

I appreciate the direction and progress. I will echo the earlier comment regarding the desire to have a far more feature rich mobile application. The fact is that many of us are no longer near our computers on a routine basis and would value access to a more comprehensive mobile application.

The new iOS application seems to have some new 'features', i.e., bugs. On both the iPhone and iPad it is no longer possible to specify a fractional serving. For example, if I want to indicate that I consumed 1.25 servings rather than 1, it is no longer possible on the iOS application. I suspect this was overlooked in testing but it is an issue - at least for me. This works fine on the full version running on the web.

While I have your attention, I would very much value the ability to input calories burned on the iOS application.

Thanks for listening. I look forward to future changes.

[Chris]

I would love to have the side bar start in the closed position instead of having the "connect with facebook" side bar automatically open. I do not like to share my workouts so to have this window open automatically is really annoying.

[Brett]

I'd really like to be able to view a chart of my pace versus my metrics (weight, sleep hours, mood, etc...)