Simple Improvements to App Homescreen View
I'd like to suggest a couple of simple improvements (IMHO) to the content of the homescreen room tiles in the Tado app:
- The tile is large, and there is plenty of spare space on it, so could we get an indicator of the room's temperature behaviour. What I mean is that if the room temperature is rising then an arrow pointing upwards, if it's cooling an arrow pointing downwards. If the room is in temperature maintenance mode, then perhaps a ~ symbol. I appreciate that the room tile has a "Heating to" and "Set to" at the bottom of the tile, but that text is small - a simple indicator showing me whether the room is actually getting hotter or colder or maintaining (regardless of the actual boiler demand state) would be great.
- Being able to see the demand state of the room/zone/SRV (the little 1/2/3 flames symbol) on the main tile view would also be a nice touch. It would allow me to see at a glance how many of my rooms were making demand, and how open the SRV(s) are.
For the UI purists, perhaps a simple user config that allows selection of either or both indicators on the tile view ?
I think that this should really only be an App change - the data is already available it's only where, how and when it gets displayed.
Thanks !
XKRMonkey
Comments
-
good idea.
I was also thinking of displaying the humidity levels on those tiles (in a corner). Perhaps to limit the clutter, only show the humidity levels, when too high/low, eg. 60%.
other idea could be to show time of next scheduled temp change.
2 -
I have also been puzzled why the current heating overview is shown when you click through the "Care and Protect" tile, and isn't under the "Home" tile.
In fact, now that I've been looking, the Home tile is a complete waste of time and totally misnamed unless it gets some surgery:
Logically, the "Home" tile should be the overview of interesting stuff related to your home installation - not just the Geofencing status. Why would you have to click through a whole tile to see that Tado has selected Home Mode automatically, when the tile itself could show that ! Why not summarize ON the tile with information like Geofence Status and number of zones currently calling for heat (and/or cooling), and then click through to see the detail ("Tado is in Auto mode for geofencing and selected "Home" because 3 people (John, Paul and Ringo) are at home." and "Lounge is calling for heat at 100%, Kitchen is calling for heat at 20%, Bedroom 1 has an open window") ?
This would make much more sense for the Home Tile, and it would be good to be able to rearrange the non-room tiles as well as order the rooms (zones) themselves.
Just a thought.
0 -
@XKRMonkey there is no “Home” tile. I think you’re confusing it with the “Geofencing” tile which does rightly focus on the geofencing mode. You raise some valid points about the overall status of the home but I would expect to see that summary elsewhere. With the geofencing mode there is no need to click through, as auto/home/away can already be determined from the Home Screen.
0 -
@XKRMonkey I can see the benefit of potentially having the heat requests on the tiles for each zone, bringing what's under the Care & Protect tile to the forefront. That makes sense to me.
However, the "Home" tile you refer to is actually the "Geofencing" tile, if you assume that consistency of font size across the tiles represents the tile name. So for example the "Geofencing" label is consistent with the "Air Comfort" label and the room name labels etc.
The HOME is the Geofencing status, and this switches to say AWAY when it changes to away mode. The icon also changes too. I personally don't see anything needs changing for that tile, but that's just my thoughts.
1 -
@cbd20 and @GrilledCheese2 (what happened to GrilledCheese(1)? 😀 )
Thanks for the correction in respect of the tile I had mistakenly referred to as "Home" - I guess nobody is getting out much lately !
Overall, my comments stand - having a Home summary tile would make sense - the Care and Protect tile having things like the current demands in it seems counter-intuitive, but a summary of demand (number of hours/mins the boiler has been active today) fits a little better maybe. It could be helpful to see that in the context of the last 30 days, or even include a bar graph of the last 30 days so that you can see the trend more clearly. The days here have been warmer, I would expect to see the daily boiler demands dropping as a result, and it would be good to see that data.
If you're going to have a dedicated Geofencing tile, then let's get some more granular geofence functionality and start to provide details of the amount of time the system has spend in Home and Away modes, and who is home or away right now, and any zones that are shut down by their absence.
This is a SMART heating product, so let's see it getting smarter and providing greater insight and move it away from the Timeclock Replacement end of the product spectrum!
0 -
@XKRMonkey in my iOS version of the app it does show which mobile devices are home and which are away, plus their relative distance from the home. Which zones are shut down is already visible from the Home Screen so no need to repeat in the geofencing tile.
0 -
@XKRMonkey the Care and Protect tab has a bar graph already showing the last 30 days. It's also scrollable so you can go back in time. It also has an accumulated bar graph for the year, again scrollable so you can go back in time. In my case certainly shows some alarming results thanks to lockdown and being at home all the time!
In case you've not seen it, on Care and Protect click where it says Heating Activity.
Or have I misunderstood your idea?
1 -
@cbd20 no you're right I'd just never tried to click through from the Heating Activity block (maybe the ... that has come to mean "more" would help that ?). I still think that this information (the graphs) do logically sit in Care and Protect (they may also have relevance in the "Energy Savings" view too), but the actual individual real-time demand/valve status information is more relevant on the room/zone tiles and summarised as a "whole house" view separately on an "At a glance" view.
@GrilledCheese2 you're also right, though I kind of need to "hover" over the the house icon (actually, I have to touch it on my iOS devices) to see - my previous comment about not getting out much means that I haven't noticed some of the changes that occur on these screens to try and explore deeper. I take back some of my "observations" on the basis that I hadn't observed the answers! Thanks guys :)
The thing about repeating information in more than one place is an interesting separate conversation. Data is about context. On my iPhone, I see only part of my home (I have 10 zones, plus the extra skills and summary tiles) which means scrolling up and down even to see what's going on overall, before I ever click into the detail from a tile. A single summary tile telling me in broad terms what's happening, even if there is more detail when I click through from the specific room or skill tile isn't an issue. It also isn't hard to do from a development perspective, if the raw data already exists and just needs presenting.
Thanks for the dialogue guys !
0 -
New Tado user - week down and loving it. Agree the 1/2/3 heat demand should be added to thermostat tiles so you can see what is demanding heat.
Should be a simple thing to do.
Why has this not been picked up since the original post?0 -
@SimonTickell Welcome to Tado Community !
The quick answer to your question is that Tado isn't brilliant at taking input from the user community and actioning it. The slightly longer answer is more complex than this simple summary, but amounts to the same thing. Nonetheless, I wouldn't let that put you off, since generally I don't think that this is much different to most of the other leading brands in this space, and definitely better than some of them.
I think there are some good comments on this thread, particularly from @GrilledCheese2 and @cbd20 but threads rapidly drop out of view unless there is continuing dialogue and the UI is generally less important to the community than other areas. Personally I think this should all be part of a wider revamp of the product and it's features.
0
