The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Bug report: Garmin Venu - Usability - High severity

Summary: When displaying a notification over a paused activity, swiping down will delete the paused activity instead of the notification, without an Undo feature.

SeverityHigh (accidental but irrevocable data loss)

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Take a PTO day to enjoy a 7-hour outdoor exercise.
  2. Start the exercise on the Garmin Venu device.
  3. Spend 82 minutes in the exercise.
  4. Press Button A on the Venu to pause the activity. The activity will show as Paused, with a Discard (X) indication on the top of the display and a Save (check) indication on the bottom.
  5. Have a friend innocently text you about a nonessential matter. A notification shows up on the Venu display.
  6. As you have done thousands of times before, swipe down to dismiss the notification. The activity is deleted, but the notification just stays there, mocking you.
  7. Stare at the device for a moment in stunned silence.
  8. Frantically swipe up on the device to try to undo the deletion. Nothing happens because there is no Undo feature for this action.
  9. (Omitted)
  10. (Omitted again, but this time with reference to the usability engineers at Garmin who apparently forgot the rule that inadvertent data loss must never happen.)
  11. (Omitted once more, but this time with reference to said engineers' standardized test scores, parentage, and general usefulness to humanity.)
  12. Begin drafting a strongly-worded bug report to share with the above-mentioned Garmin usability engineers.
  13. Spend the next five and a half hours trying to calculate split times without knowing for sure that the first activity was 82 minutes, not 75 or 90.

Device details: Garmin Venu, SW version 6.30, API version 3.2.6

Comments are closed