Do you like the new "in-ride look"?
I always try to be positive about new user interfaces. I always try to recognize the advantages of new UIs. In my previous job I designed a lot of UIs.
But this new updated UI does not work for me. The legacy UI was a very good looking UI (It had some roughness, but was a nice, modern UI). The new rounded corner boxes are pointless, the grey background color is ugly, and not harmonic. The legacy UI was much more modern this new UI is just old fashioned and outdated. The large upcoming elevation graph black background on a black screen looked very good, the new grey graph is just ugly. The legacy UI gave higher contrast feeling, the new grey color brings low contrast feeling.
My suggestions for Hammerhead are rethink and tweak this new UI and/or make an option to use the legacy UI (my main buying decision to Karoo was the good looking UI). The best would be it you keep the style of the legacy UI and make small updates and error corrections on it. It the new boxes layout is a must have (for future functions), you have a much more better way to design a boxed layout.
Please review this new UI!
What do you think?
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New user. My main reason for buying the Karoo 2 was for the screen clarity and large screen. Now- it’s truly mind boggling to have a large screen with rich contrast and to make everything smaller and now use boxes on a grayed out contrastless background. Instead of leaving a great feature alone Hammerhead has essentially ruined a feature rich product. So does this mean in the future when the genius’s at Hammerhead have some great features we can only expect them to change it? Is this more of a “justifying my position and salary “ decision for the designers?
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After a few rides on the new UI, I can agree that it did not add any function to the product. I do not like the grey background color against the bubbles and the smaller data readouts that it produces. I am really hoping that hammerhead can / will build in an option for the 'Classic UI' that can be switched to. If the v2 ui can be developed along side the classic while giving the user the option. Karoo had become a great product, because it just worked great, you did not have to really worry about it. Ali - thanks for all your support, but please tell the dev team to help out all us curmudgeons.
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@Ali ... "right on spot in terms of giving options to our riders. That's what we are trying to work on right now. Thanks a lot for your understanding.
We cannot roll back the Software, as we do not want break the stability of the multiple tools interacting together."
And right there, you have just crushed everyone's hopes of getting the old UI back. It has never bothered your developers before about breaking stability. The numerous 'upgrades' that have introduced bugs in the past are too many to mention! Ah well, it was almost a great cycling computer!!! This is a goodbye from me!
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I get there's a lot of hate for the new UI, but some of these posts are over the top. Companies make mistakes, hopefully they will be able make it clearer in the next release, but what I don't get is how any of you manage to ride a bike and not die when you spend so long looking at a bike computer? Why not cut down what you show on each page so its larger and clearer then do the analysis at the end of the ride?
The functionality of the head unit hasn't changed so nothing is lost and all the data is still there and logged.
I personally like the new look, its clear enough for me, I only show 4 data fields per page, that way I can glance at whats most important to me. I get that everyone is different and people generally don't like change, but dial it down a bit, being angry and aggressive isn't conducive to change and collaboration.
Obviously this is all in my humble opinion.
*Raises shields* and awaits the flak
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@Stephen Craske Agree that some reactions are very extreme. But this is what you get when you overwhelm the users with a total revamp.
This is also a learning moment. Never before have so many users expressed their opinion - unprecedentedly high participation. So bring it all the together and move on - with more and open communication - with at least a ⚠️ -
@Stephen Craske, I to often wonder how some people manage to survive their ride because it seems they spend most of their time staring at their computer. To that end, in an effort to minimize fiddling with the computer mid-ride, I have more data fields on my screen enabling me to glance down and immediately see what I want to see.
The expansion of the data labels to consume more screen real estate in the last update severely impacted my setup in a negative way. Additionally, the inconsistency in naming convention of the data labels leads me to question the competency of whomever is supposedly steering the ship. Bad decisions get made and bad releases do happen as a result. I've done them. A lack of clear communication and corrective action though leads one back to questioning competency.
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There‘s a thread on Reddit from this week, not sure if not satire, but the new UI seems to have grown on some users some and will be even sad if it ever gets changed back to what it was. 🙃
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Jud - I mentioned above, by giving the options to the users. By keeping the new UI and by also introducing options to switch back to the old UI. A much wider section of community riders have liked the new UI and reached out to us to share their satisfaction and support with us. Users will be getting the option to chose between the two designs.
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@ali, throw a vote. That many users prefer the new interface, looking at the comments on this post, I find it hard to believe. For me this new interface has been the worst thing that has happened to the karoo2.
I wish he could roll back the firmware while Hammerhead finally decides what he's going to do (which I hope is something the community will be happy about him).
It would be interesting if decisions of this caliber were commented on in a post, blog or similar to notify users. And it does not happen to us again that we have updated without looking, and there is no remedy.
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@Lee
Regarding the matter, you are correct, but your tone and choice of words are - once again - completely inappropriate.
Are you suggesting that someone should be shot for modifying an interface? Do you even listen to yourself?
sic "Background of grey boxes are PATHETIC - whomevers made this decision needs shooting imo!"You've been dealing with insults and getting worked up about this issue for the past two weeks.You are not helping!
Find something meaningful to do with your life. -
@Ali
Are you also going to address the issues with the new design? If so, which? Re:
- Two line titles
- Small and thin fonts
- Weird gaps between boxes
- Low contrast color choices
- Small icons
- Weird floating boxes in middle of mapIn general I greatly appreciate that Hammerhead is trying to improve the visibility of data in-ride. I just think there is a lot of work still to be done.
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@Ali - good news about UI choices. And I agree the commenters on Reddit are much happier with the new UI than people on this forum.
But as for choices - If the new UI tweaked the data label format (including smaller font size, one line short abbreviations, and subdued color) I would opt for the new UI.
Plus - if you can have a choice of old or new UI then maybe you could have more than two "Skin" choices?? None of HH's competitors can do that.
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@Ali I want to point out that I commend the effort to address readability. Everyone will not be happy when a change is made but I think there’s some constructive comments (gems) in this post thread. I don’t want to repeat what others have said but some mock ups for users to review could be useful. Everyone will have opinions but putting controls in place to run a good study would help filter out the “zealots”. A decent research PhD or DBA could help structure it.
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@Ali, want to echo want @Gilbert Bollinger said. We do appreciate the speed of turnaround in listening to user feedback. Very few other bike computer companies would have done the same and so quickly. Please do pay attention to the gems. Karoo is an awesome product and you can see the passion the community has for it.
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There are some extremely toxic posts and snide comments on the new UI and those making them should be ashamed. This is a forum, not Twitter.
The Data Fields delineated by boxes is a major improvement, although the implementation leaves several things to be desired:
1) make the boxes just thin lines without the grey border; e.g. similar to Garmin. (The antiquated Wahoo has only a horizontal border as I doubt they can manage boxes.)
2) keep the DF Text as is, I like the extra size as you can actually read it. However, go back to the single line and just use abbr. as per the old UI. Most abbr. are easily understandable.
3) make the DF text a much bolder font; e.g. Garmin has the same font size for a similar number of DF's, but the font is much bolder and subsequently much more legible.That is all HH need to do. If, as Ali states, they will offer both UI options an the end of the month, then everyone should be happy and the extreme whingers can have their toys put back in the pram. They can also apologize to HH for moaning about ignoring customer feedback and not doing anything.
Try that with Garmin who only give copy-paste replies to issues raised, let alone actually taking any action on storms-in-a-teacup like this. (Google - Garmin 1040 gradient lag - and look at some of the 48 pages of moaning about that!)
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So HH want us to place hope in them developing a toggle for a user selectable UI but we have been waiting months for a frequently requested toggle to disable re-routing? I won't hold my breath. And to suggest rolling back a UI - a graphical only change - could break core functionality is contradictory as every 'progressive' update already risks bugging core functionality.
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I have been riding with the new UI now for a couple of hundert km in bright and dark conditions and never had any problems reading the screen. I have never seen such buzz about more or less nothing. I don’t care about the grey background, it is irrelevant.
Just shorten the descriptions of the fields, eliminate letters, use meaningful symbols; and for gods sake make the color of the background adjustable and make these fields fully floatable and this could be useful.
What is relevant: faulty elevation data (no, I don’t want to set up a WIFI-hotspot!), high battery consumption (no, I bought Karoo to use all the features!!)! That’s what really bothers me, super big nuisance (no, I don’t need a super talkative support without practical solutions!!!)...
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@ Mike F for the entire time I have had the Karoo (18 months), people have been requesting politely on this forum to make the data fields larger and usefully use up some of the dead space. It hasnt happened and in fact now the data fields are smaller... I am just doing a side by side comparison, using 9 fields as an example the data field text is now no larger than the text on my Wahoo Bolt V1, and that is with a screen that is getting on for double the area, I am not sure that is progress
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@Ali
Thank you that HH listen our voice: it's really great to hear that sooner or later users will be able to choose between the 2 UI.
That's great. Thank you!
Can't wait to have this feature available and I'm looking forward for other improvements. I hope HH will surprise us with something cool!
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Hey everyone,
Thank you for always sharing your constructive criticism on the Karoo and our software updates! While we always ensure to share your enthusiasm and sentiments with our team, sometimes these conversations can tend to go sideways. No harm no foul! We pride ourselves to have such an engaging and active community.
With that said, some of the comments on this thread and several new posts created on same topic, there were a few comments that we should have acted on earlier. In order to maintain a healthy shared space we have posted community guidelines - Click here.
We look forward to promoting a positive atmosphere here on the forum!
Ride safe! :)
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