Feature proposal: Notifications during activities should be made optional

[Olaf Gottschalk]

While I certainly am a strong user of smartphone notifications in daily business, I have my concerns about the current implementation of notifications during sports.

When on a casual run or a bike ride, it’s absolutely useful and wanted by me to get informed while on the run/ride… But…
When doing a Yoga session, this is an absolute No-Go.

Yesterday, I and everyone else around was disturbed massively by an ongoing WhatsApp group chat while in a Yoga session.

I was really baffled to see that there is absolutely no way to turn this off, neither on a per sports basis nor generally.

Notifications during exercise are a nice to have, if wanted - but should not be always on, especially in certain sports.

The only workaround I can think of today is turning off Bluetooth on the mobile. Sigh
Can you think of any other possibility?

[freeheeler]

@Olaf-Gottschalk
I would have suggested to turn off bluetooth.
when I do not want to get disturbed, I either switch to flight mode in the phone, toggle do not disturb on in the watch, or turn off bluetooth.
this way we’ve already got 3 ways to not get disturbed.
I find this ok, because I’m switching on silent mode in my phone anyway

[surfboomerang]

And in addititon to @freeheeler suggestions it’s even possible to switch off notifications from the notification widget.
So since we have so many options to achieve this goal, my preference would be that the precious time of Suunto devs is spent on other features/fixes.

[Likarnik]

@surfboomerang @freeheeler my use case is opposite maybe implement option to enable/disable notifications/do not disturb mode during activity. I can’t find this now. I normally do not have enabled notifications on watch during day, because I have a phone always on me. The most use for me is during bike ride, so I can se notifications on my watch on handlebar. But if I forget to turn them on, I am without notifications for whole day for example… Or when I run early morning and I have auto do not disturb and forget to turn it off, I can’t disable it during activity. I think this could solve a lot of ‘problems’.

[Mff73]

something like this ?
https://forum.suunto.com/post/4958

(and yes, it is an old idea )

[Olaf Gottschalk]

@surfboomerang said in Feature proposal: Notifications during activities must be made optional:

And in addititon to @freeheeler suggestions it’s even possible to switch off notifications from the notification widget.
So since we have so many options to achieve this goal, my preference would be that the precious time of Suunto devs is spent on other features/fixes.

I don’t see it like this at all.
Notification during exercise should be an option on the sport mode just like autolap or any other setting is.

It should not be up to me to always remember what I need to do when doing things like Yoga or whatnot.

[A Former User]

@surfboomerang said in Feature proposal: Notifications during activities must be made optional:

So since we have so many options to achieve this goal, my preference would be that the precious time of Suunto devs is spent on other features/fixes.

[Olaf Gottschalk]

@freeheeler said in Feature proposal: Notifications during activities must be made optional:

@Olaf-Gottschalk
I would have suggested to turn off bluetooth.
when I do not want to get disturbed, I either switch to flight mode in the phone, toggle do not disturb on in the watch, or turn off bluetooth.
this way we’ve already got 3 ways to not get disturbed.
I find this ok, because I’m switching on silent mode in my phone anyway

Could you explain which of these workarounds are even possible once you got disturbed the first time?

In a Yoga class you cannot stand up and go pick up your phone.
During the running exercise on the Race, afaik you cannot switch off BT nor can you select DND.
So, what can I do once I have the problem?

[peegee]

@Olaf-Gottschalk
I second that notifications only when chosen during workout…

[Łukasz Szmigiel]

@Likarnik +1

I would like to have a notification switch in workout preparation screen.

Notifications: All / Calls / None

[Egika]

And I would like to have:
All / WeChat / Nothing

This is is a requirement that MUST be met by the developers, because it is the way, I need it

scnr

[logger]

@Olaf-Gottschalk I guess sometimes it’s necessary to remember to enable certain settings yourself, instead of expecting a device to predict and have a setting for every single use case. As mentioned, there are plenty of options to not be disturbed, and if you have to leave the yoga class for thirty seconds because you forgot to turn off your phone, then that doesn’t seem so bad and maybe being annoyed that you have to do it will enable you to remember it next time. Turning off your phone before going into a yoga class seems pretty standard—you don’t really want it beeping or vibrating wherever you’ve left it in the studio anyway.

[Łukasz Szmigiel]

@Egika very funny indeed.

It’s always nice to have a valuable and sane conversation.

This is for convenience and not a case of never ending wishes. I believe it falls into the same category as having the sports modes remember S+ used before. Why was that even important if it takes just a few clicks to set the S+ each and every time before the workout. Just like turning off the notifications.

I’m going for a workout and I don’t want the screen to display notifications without having to remember to set up my watch or phone each time. This fits nicely into the overall feeling of Suunto watches not trying to steal the experience but to augment it.

And being on this forum for a while it seems to me that more personalisation is one of the key requests from many users.

[Egika]

@Łukasz-Szmigiel fully agreed.
I was just triggered from the “must be…”.
What the discussion has showed so far is indeed that personal preferences may be different, and there is not something like “must be the way I want it”.

I appreciate the fruitful comments adding to the topic in general

[Olaf Gottschalk]

@logger …you have never attended any Yoga classes, right?

[Olaf Gottschalk]

It is so funny how I can trigger different kind of people to react on my thoughts…

When I criticized the lack of Emojis, the sport hardliners were mocking me because I want to use the device 24/7 as a “smartwatch” instead of doing “proper” sports. When I criticize that notifications during workouts can be very inappropriate, others immediately pop up to tell me I should just manually go to flight mode on my phone or disable BT - now I am too much into sports?

I am not asking for a million options for each and every ones taste. I think this is a responsible thought of product designers who define features like notifications on a smartwatch to allow a user to enable / disable sound simply for reasons that people annoy their surroundings with beeps and on the other hand it’s also appropriate to allow the user to decide whether notifications should occur during a workout.

When you do running intervals on a track with your smartphone nearby - do you want to read your texts? Do you want to then stop training to enable flight mode?
Some answers I get here really show me how other people’s arguments can be ignored perfectly… Just saying.

[logger]

@Olaf-Gottschalk Only three times weekly for twenty years. I always put my phone on silent as soon as I enter the studio. It’s not hard. And when people occasionally forget, they leave the mat and walk over to their phone and deal with it so as not to interrupt the rest of the class further. I fail to understand why this is not an option for you

[logger]

@Olaf-Gottschalk I guess what I was trying to say is: Yes, it would be great if the watch had every possible option for customization. I too would love that. In the real world, however, it has plenty of options for you to achieve what you want/need, it just requires the tiniest bit of effort and thought from you. As someone else said above, I’d much rather that development time was directed toward something else, in order to give the watch actually new features or capabilities. That seems infinitely more useful to me than providing an option that allows people to forget to put their phone on silent before a yoga class, but obviously YMMV.

[freeheeler]

@Olaf-Gottschalk
I’m frequently doing yoga and sometimes meditation when I feel like.
I do the same before a yoga session as I do when I have important meetings: activate DND in the watch and put my phone in silent mode.
I am absolutely pro customisation, but I am against overcomplicating settings and overloading the start screen. it has a lot of settings already now. it should be as simple and intuitive as possible.
it’s just my opinion.
but I understand your point. I am thoughtful in this case and have little understanding when watches and phones are ringing in an inappropriate situation… even worse: you’re invited in a 1:1 meeting and the other one answers a call during the meeting

[zhang965]

@Olaf-Gottschalk said in Feature proposal: Notifications during activities should be made optional:

When I criticized the lack of Emojis, the sport hardliners were mocking me because I want to use the device 24/7 as a “smartwatch” instead of doing “proper” sports. When I criticize that notifications during workouts can be very inappropriate, others immediately pop up to tell me I should just manually go to flight mode on my phone or disable BT - now I am too much into sports?

Lol, you are not Suunto target user.