Thursday, September 24, 2015

Watch OS Workout App Idea

For the next iteration of the workout app on Apple Watch, I’d like to see a “trim” feature.  Apple’s workout app, correctly, doesn’t shut off just because a pre-specified time has elapsed.  This makes good sense as a user would hate to lose credit for a workout because she went longer than anticipated.  However, it also means that it is easy to forget to turn off the app and thus can cause the recorded length of a workout to exceed its actual length.

I think it would make sense to be able to “trim” a workout in a manner analogous to trimming a video.  Exercisers would still be kept honest (any activity recorded has to have occurred) but would allow a more accurate reflection of active minutes.  Ideally, the trim feature would have some sort of “activity” or “exertion” graph that makes it easier to judge where to trim back to rather than relying on time as the only metric.

I imagine the workflow is:
  •           In addition to “save workout”, there is a “trim workout” button
  •           After selecting, there is a line with a waveform reflecting intensity (adjusted for the type of workout) with time stamps or ticks
  •           The digital crown would control the cutoff point (highlighting what will be excised)
  •           A simple button to confirm the trim and save or to cancel the trim and return to the save workout screen

An even better trim feature would be to be able to cut a workout into different segments to avoid capturing time spent resting.  But that seems a little harder to do on the watch interface. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Looks like the "pause" function picks up the concept of breaking a workout into parts. I thought that was the harder function so I really hope they introduce something like the trim.