Complaints about the Fitbit App
Home Screen - The great update removed the ability to reorder the tiles on the home screen. Let’s look at what Fitbit thinks is the most important information.
Following the dashboard, the very most important thing for me is a always-recurring notification that “Recovery requires rest days”. With up to four days without workouts this most urgent information in the whole of the application appears.
The Recovery header, imparting no information but eating up valuable screen space. This is the last thing that appears on my non-scrolled screen on a Pixel 6.
The Sleep duration tile imparts information that I may check once or twice a week, and it is wrong. I’ll cover that in the Sleep screen.
The Activity header, like its big brother, Recovery, imparts no information.
Cardio load is up next. It appeared with no explanation. Using Google to get an explanation is no less opaque. Oh, and it has no target, cool.
Exercise days is another once a week check for me, maybe. If I forget if I worked out on Tuesday, here it is! Of course, almost every time I use the app I need to scroll past this to get to something I need.
Following Exercise days is a workout summary. This is useful and I look at it daily, usually to click on it to get to the workout detail.
The Health header continues in the tradition of wasted space.
Health metrics follows and I check it once a week. It is not the most uninteresting thing on the screen, that title goes to Exercise days.
Heart is the only tile that has real-time information. You would thing that that alone would promote it to higher up on the screen. It also leads to one of the more interesting screens that graphs heart rate over time.
Weight is at the very bottom. This may be appropriate because the only information is that which I have entered. I’m not sure what the gauge next to the weight signifies, if anything.
Sleep Screen – This screen is nearly useless because it cannot seem to discern when night started. It appears if I wake up in the midnight to 1 AM range, all sleep from the “prior day” is not recorded. If I go to bed at 9, wake up at 12:15, and then get up at 6 AM, I show 5 hours of sleep. This failure makes this screen useless.
Cardio load Screen – This shows a graph telling me when my inexplicable cardio load occurred, but not obviously. Instead of marking cardio load when it happened, it shows the sum. Mostly it tells me that there is a remainder of the day with little or no cardio load. I find that very reassuring.
Exercise screen – This screen is not entirely useless which makes it an exception. You click on “Exercise days” to get to “Exercise”. Your tile and screen titles should agree.
Workout screen – This is the screen that shows a summary of a workout. Buckle up.
First up are the maps which are not interesting for reasons that follow. But they are up first. The maps lack clarity. ROYGBIV is your friend. The Heart rate zones map shows blue for light and red for cardio, so far so good. Moderate and vigorous are indistinguishable and they are the most interesting areas for workout improvement. The pace map duplicates the sin in keeping to a blue, blue-green, green that actually works. It works only because the blue-green “Average pace” is “Not tracked”. Why isn’t it tracked? Don’t know. If it was you probably couldn’t discern the pace at all.
The next table lists various statistics for the workout. The Zone Min is listed but not is calculated. It does not corelate to the Zone Min featured prominently on the Home Screen dashboard. Why have two things called Zone Min if they are two different things.
Following that is the Heart rate zones. The graph is very interesting and could be moved up.
Time in each zone could be moved up as it is instructive.
Pace laps are interesting but the graph seems backwards. I see what you are trying to do but it is not intuitive. My fastest split should have a shorter line than my longest one.
Health Metrics screen – This screen somehow survived the great update to remain useful. Once again, you click on “Health metrics” to get to “Health Metrics”.
Heart screen – This screen also survived the great update to remain useful. The titles even match!
Weight screen – Like Heart, this screen remained useful and has consistent titles.
I have reposted this without expressing my opinion about the abilities of your engineering department. I hope you now find this acceptable. My opinion hasn’t changed, only the posting.
