Settings confusion
Hi,
First post so I have to say thanks for the app, it's great!
But on to the issue. When I was picking which app to buy to replace original one, I did my googling and research. And one of the most common voices against your app was that it was too complicated, only for advanced people, etc.
As I'm IT geek with many years of experience in all kinds of tech, I did not mind that, as I usually am the advanced user. I bought the app, and same day got rid of original app. I was generally very satisfied, and slew of options is just a positive for me.
But couple months down the road, I got to understand the negative feedback. And I will do best to help you solve it.
App itself isn't complicated or unfriendly, it's quite nice, intuitive, and very good looking. But the settings... To keep it simple - it's all.over the place.
So to go into more details, though I'm sure everyone here is already aware of it, we have settings in each section, in each subsection, plus some settings enable (expand) even more settings, and some of those even have their own settings underneath when you tap on the option's line.
That's where things go south. I wanted to change my heartbeat options, since battery did suffer a bit with the continuous option, but since I did not touch the settings for a while - I couldn't find it! It ended with success 3 days later, as it's one of those "hidden" ones.
Now what I would do to improve on it, please take this as a suggestion to aid the devs, nothing else:
- put ALL settings under the hamburger menu -> Settings; that's how all other apps in the world do it
- DO NOT keep the 3 distinct "settings"/"cogs"/"options" in the main menu, it's confusing... Either have Settings label or the cogs icon at the top, don't have both (specially not in two different places)
- divide the settings as they are now, heartbeat, sleep, Mi-band menu, etc, that's pretty well separated already, but it all needs to be as a tab/submenu/subpage of the global settings.menu
- don't put the option to toggle and to change the settings of that toggle in the same line, add "more settings" or "advanced" under the toggle (enabled when toggle is ON, disabled when it's OFF); the issue with my continuous heartbeat was due to this one
- always make visible in UI that there is an additional setting or action (where you have one)
- in the graph/data pages where settings are currently in app, just add the "go to settings" link, don't keep the settings there
There are probably few more tweaks here and there, but I'm writing this from phone so I'd need to switch to PC so I can go through app as well. If you are interested in more detailed descriptions, please comment below, and I'll take my time during weekend to actually comment on each of the mis-positioned settings in the current app.
Again, please don't think of this as a negative comment, I really want this to be received as constructive criticism, even a discussion (if you're open to it from your side).
I do understand that changing all this requires a major rebuild, but it's not all so bad, mostly a reshuffle of the existing elements, I'm pretty sure that it could be done in a single session in a few hours time, despite huge visual change.
Comments
I fully agree that the settings are "messy". It can be very difficult to find that one setting you know is there, but buried a couple levels deep on some screen.
Agree entirely, one needs to spend several days working backwards and forwards through the options and trying to then trying to recall a setting. Great app and like everything in life, can be improved. Some form of manual may be starter, something that can be searched. Positive feedback on such initiatives will hopefully generate more sales.
I agree. Please, change the organization of settings. It's all messy and unfriendly, even for "advanced" users
Along those lines, and I know this is tough, I've had to do it before in IT project management....
You need some kind of user manual that goes step by step through each menu and menu option and defined what it means...
For example under Mail Icon> apps> notification setting there is a "New" option with Disable All Notification
and a check box Android Auto App is running (do I need to check the box in order to stop receiving notifications? what do you mean by Android Auto App is running
Is the for Car (Auto settings) notifications get disabled when I am hooked into my cars Auto navigation BT hands free app...
Or maybe when I am running Maps or Waze?
Is this a special app I should get?
Dose this mean that notifications are disabled as long as the Android OS is running on my phone (which wouldn't really make since as for the most part Mi Band needs to be accessing the Android OS and if your phone is turned off or out of power it won't be able to relay messages to the watch anyway...
Once you have a guide compiled it will Greatly cut down on the number of support querries you have to field, which is a time waste for you.
You may need to put in some initial time going through each menu, sub menu and option, but it Will save you time in the long run