Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

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Harry
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Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by Harry »

Dear folks,

Although I'm pretty busy working on LapTimer Rookie for Android v17.1 currently, plans for the next iOS versions become more concrete. As you may have read in the announcements section, version 17.5 of LapTimer will be reworked to by iOS7 compliant. This is a big task as not only many icons / colors / text need to be reworked, but some new usage patterns want to be adopted too. Besides this, there are two major items that will go into 17.5:
  1. Video background recording (i.e. it will not be necessary to open the Video View if you want to record video). Furthermore, it will be possible to operate a MultiCam only.
  2. General improvement of usability.
This is a request for your suggestions to improve LapTimer usability. The (incomplete) list I have collected so far are as follows:
  • Creating a vehicle should make this vehicle the current vehicle.
  • Loading a track set shoud make this track set the current track.
  • Creating a POI should automatically associate it with the current track.
  • While viewing a lap's details, it should be possible to swipe to the laps before and after.
  • Allow grouping of Lap List by session and track day.
  • Changing a lap's vehicle, should change the vehicle for all laps in this session.
[added later]
  • When editing a vehicle's front wheel size, copy to rear if not edited so far.
  • Add a health check / checklist on sensor, track set, system status to warn users in case LapTimer is not prepared to go.
[added later from an (otherwise rather unfair) AppStore review]
  • Change Track List layout to make configuration visible.
  • Memorize overlay configuration.
  • In Track List, show tracks around current position
[added later]
  • Improve track deletion - remove empty sections in Lap List automatically, allow lap deletion
  • Several other "multi item" operations
  • Issue a warning when a trigger is created the first time
  • Remove Easy Mode and Field Indicator setting all together - generates more issues than simplification
  • Moving the map should unlock the current position
  • Improve AX setup to be clear on the difference between starting line and staging area, offer both standing go and go triggers
Not all ideas can be realized in v17.5, but getting the full view now should be a good basis for prioritization. ;-) Please let me know what disturbed you when you used LapTimer first (things not intuitive), and what appears impractical in daily use.

Thanks for your proposals!

- Harry
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momostallion
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by momostallion »

Hi Harry,

A couple of suggestions that all tie into the same concept: ease of use while racing.

I don't know if any others feel the same way but personally I would love to have a 'Simple' or 'Basic' mode in addition to timer, classic, racers.

I currently use 'Timer' mode, I think it is great in portrait mode but when you turn the phone and put in landscape mode, the 4 sections are small and difficult to read unless you take your eyes off track for a bit.

I would love to have a simple mode when you turn it sideways it is just a big lap timer that takes up the whole screen which would make it easy to read. When you cross over the start/finish line, it should flash the last lap time and alternate with GAP in green(-) or red(+) to reference/last/target** for 10 seconds before going back to lap timer for next lap.

**target mode.
Reference lap and last lap gap timers are awesome. I think a manually entered "target" lap time would be an excellent feature to add. I race a budget endurance series and want to try to race to a time and would love to see my gap to desired time.


Ideally the ability to customize the views would be the best luxury feature for any user but as a programmer i know that customizable UI is one of the most difficult things to accomplish.

Thank you Harry, love the product.
Mo
Girvamonkey
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by Girvamonkey »

In the current version of LapTimer I have several "multi-configuration tracks" that I use, and of course they have conflicting POI sets. Or another example is my POI sets from "Home to Work" and "Work to Home", etc.

So far, my solution to this has been simply that I have emailed each configuration to myself and each time I wish to use one of these POI sets, I delete the others and load only the one I wish to use each time. However to do this, I have to go to my email app, search and find the email I sent myself, then load it into LapTimer. It works, but it's a hassle.

Would it be possible to make a way for us to SAVE custom/personal POI sets in the app itself? So that when we go to the TRACK page it could display all the real tracks (as it does now), but also display a section such as "Custom/User POI Sets" where we could load them more quickly?
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by erikvandermey »

In Autocross mode, video recording should start when you press the "staged" button and end 10 seconds after crossing the finish line.

Countdown timer doesn't respond to "countdown timer" switch when overlaying data on video. (i.e. it's there whether or not the switch is set to on/off).

Option to export/overlay an entire lap session (this may be a bad idea as lap session video files are pretty big).
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by pfbzzz »

Allow more (all?) modes in landscape mode!

I use HLT with an integrated iPad mini I mounted in my 996. It's in landscape mode and of course there is no way to rotate it. I'm locked out of Racers, Acceleration, Classic, Speedo, Satellites, etc.

Plenty of screen real estate on the iPad, would be great if I could access these modes in landscape on my iPad, even if they were just letter-boxed to the same dimensions as the portrait screen!
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Harry
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by Harry »

Girvamonkey wrote:In the current version of LapTimer I have several "multi-configuration tracks" that I use, and of course they have conflicting POI sets. Or another example is my POI sets from "Home to Work" and "Work to Home", etc.

So far, my solution to this has been simply that I have emailed each configuration to myself and each time I wish to use one of these POI sets, I delete the others and load only the one I wish to use each time. However to do this, I have to go to my email app, search and find the email I sent myself, then load it into LapTimer. It works, but it's a hassle.

Would it be possible to make a way for us to SAVE custom/personal POI sets in the app itself? So that when we go to the TRACK page it could display all the real tracks (as it does now), but also display a section such as "Custom/User POI Sets" where we could load them more quickly?
In case you have defined your HOME2WORK tracks like this: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater you can keep both "conflicting" configurations at the same time. Conflict always means "potential conflict". LapTimer simply takes the smallest rectangle covering all pois of a track set, and checks if this rectangle (of polar coordinates) overlaps with any other lap's rectangle. So in case you are sure the triggers of two track sets do not conflict during detection, you can ignore that warning. To improve the configuration shown in the post above, you may use triggers with driving directions on top. This will make the configuration even more reliant.

- Harry
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by Harry »

Hi again,

Please try to stay within the poll's intent here.

I'm aware there are a lot of feature requests on new views and it is fine for me you add separate feature request threads for them. This thread however is about "optimizing" the current user interface to reduce complexity, number of interactions, make it more intuitive. Sorry in case I did not make this clear. Thanks!

This is just because I fear the thread will get unstructured and overlapping to many other threads otherwise. Thanks!

- Harry
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Srcypher
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by Srcypher »

+1 on the "ready to record, everything is set up correctly, I know where I am". Most of my usability issues are around that.

Another issue, when setting pois. My coordinate vs the map. There seems to be an offset, so I'm never quite sure if the poi i set will be triggered. If there was a way to see a circle around the poi to know its range to be picked up, or a way to "zero" out my location, so I could stand in a known location and set it as a "home" it will help setup pois on track walks.
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by karacticus »

I had a "learning" experience this weekend that seems to fit in with the user interface and multicam items described in the first post-- though I know better now.

Would it be possible to separate or dedicate some of the controls for the GoPro interface from the multicam controls? I'd shut off blue tooth due to problems with the GoPoint dongle at that appeared to aggravate Multicam and turned off Multicam discovery, which meant that the GoPro interface was also down.
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Re: Usability Suggestions for LapTimer v17.5

Post by karacticus »

As a PS on the above, maybe listing and accessing settings for the GoPro through the sensor list
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