[Feedback Request] Improvements to the manual control

Jurian

Our design team is looking into improving the manual mode in the tado app.

We are currently investigating 2 different design directions and would be happy to get any feedback. Please keep in mind that these are all mock ups, and nothing is final design yet.

Please keep in mind that we might decide to go in a different direction than the outcome of this poll, this might have various reasons but also implementation effort and corner cases.

Design direction #1: Improvements to the room screen itself.

Design direction #2: Improvements to the home screen, allowing direct control from the home screen.

In addition to your vote, please also write some written feedback about why you made your choice?

HGB

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

Why not implement changes to both homescreen and roomscreen. I think both lines of development are interesting. It's difficult to say which I would prefer. I'd have to test both screens first as I can't judge how easy or hard it is to use the small sliders to change temperatures. In the present app I sometimes find it difficult to set the slides to exactly the temperature I want, e.g. it's difficult to discriminate between 20.4 and 20.5.

rorschar

I think like @HGB, difficult to decide without having a flavour; but I prefer option one because the scrolling bar is bigger and I think it will be easier to use it

Jurian

@HGB Yes, this is something we are also considering. But we still need a priority of which direction to implement first.

what_a_tado

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

Personally I have no need for manual controls (it is supposed to be a smart system after all) but if you are going to change it my vote would be for option #2.

Unknown

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cbd20

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

I'm not a fan of having the ability to change things directly on the home screen as per option 2. The main reason being, on a touch screen interface it'll be easier to accidentally switch a room off or adjust the temperature slider when attempting to scroll down the view.

Option 1 protects against that, as clicking into a separate view requires intent, and therefore decreases the chance of an accidental adjustment.

HGB

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

Doing some user tests is a good idea. I'm ready to participate.

Berrysg

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

I voted for 2 as I'd like option to turn off a room with in home page which wouild make it easier to turn rooms off with out having to go in and out of multupme screens. Looks user friendly.

User trials would be a good idea and roll out to people who vote in poll.

Tagi

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

As I said on another website: I'm in favor of the first option regarding the homescreen. The three options that I would definitely support:

• Increments per half degree rather than per tenth of a degree. I almost always aim for the full or half degree setting, but it can be annoying to select it correctly.
• Input-on-click: for those who want to have the exact temperature to the tenth degree, I think that clicking on the current temperature should give an input field so one can manually enter the desired temperature.
• I do like the suggestion with the visible increments bar on the last screen of the first option. I'd recommend changing the visibility to a little more faded or transparent.
• The icons below the bar are probably a better choice for a quick glance. I prefer the icons over the slider, but the active icon can be shown more white instead of transparent.
• "Auto" and "Hand" are currently not used, right? Keep those consistent and maybe put the words below the icons.

Additionaly, I'm open for testing the mock ups if necessary.

Edit: In regard to the slider on the homescreen: I find that too finicky and would probably still go to the room screen to adjust the temperature.

TadaaH

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

I really like the + and - buttons that are added to the room screen in some of the mock-ups. Most of the time when I do manual changes I am just trying to turn the heating up or down a bit, and the slider is very ill equipped for that.

For example, on my already quite large phone the distance between 5 and 25 degrees on the slider is 60 mm. Meaning that if I want to turn up the temperature by 0.5 degrees, I need to click the slider and move it up by exactly 1.5 mm. That is really really fiddly to do. If you are trying to quickly change the temperature from 23.4 degrees to 8.6 degrees and back the slider design makes sense, but I'm guessing most people dont do that.

I have Tado linked to Google Home, and that app does have actual plus and minus buttons, that update the setpoint in 0.5 degree steps:

The Google Home app has basically replaced the Tado app for making manual adjustments for me, because it is so much easier and quicker to click the button once or twice than to move the slider an exact and miniscule amount.

Willem_

Option 1, definitely more intuitive.

00001010

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

Option 1, easy to use.

giesu

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

I voted for option 2, but after thinking about it, option 1 will be better at the beginning, I would also ask you to consider introducing dark mode in the application

Heatexpert

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

I think option 1 (room screen changes) makes more sense to me. The home screen should aim to be clear and easy to view the overall state of the system and temperatures in each room. If you want to make changes, the individual room screens are the logical place to do so.

I am not a fan of the sliders as it is, because it can be very fiddly to make small changes. This would become an even greater problem with small sliders on a home screen. It could also mean that scrolling through this home screen, you could change a temperature in another room by mistake, and even worse not realise you had done so.

Making the current temperature in the room more prominent on screen is a good thing, as you have done in the third example of the room screens. The "Edit Schedule" button also needs to be visible though.

Gvr_

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

I voted for option 1.

• When I want to set the temperature manually its most of the time because I want a room to heat up earlier or cool down earlier than set in de schedule, I always use the same temperature (20,5 degrees is my personal preference, and 16 degrees for the 'night' temperature), so why not give the possibility to directly go to the preset 'On' of preset 'Off' temperature?
• Temperature change per 0,5 degrees
• Possibility to change the temperature with the + and - buttons. The current slider is irritating, I want to set the temperature to 20,5 degrees but I sometimes have to reset it multiple times because I get to 20,4 of 20,6 for example.

Dan_and_his_tado

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

I am happy with the room improvements, but also against being able to change the settings on the home screen with a single click, which can easily lead to switching off the heating.

Another thing I would like to be considered: The time settings:

Currently, only possible to set it between 5 minutes and 12 hours (or next block). from time to time, I am away for the weekend, so leaving on Friday and coming back Sunday (or Monday). Sometimes, I don't use my office room for a day, but I am at home. It should be possible to set the timer for longer durations, maybe up to 36 hours, or even completely manual. I very rarely use the Geofencing option as so far it did not heat the room up in time or was set to almost the same temperature as if I am at home (so no real saving), also GPS uses a lot of battery on the phone. When I remember to switch back from manual (or off) to automatic everything is great, but when I forget (which happens a lot), I end up with a cold house.

krugster

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

Prefer #2 mostly because I can see multiple rooms at once and align their temps or see which one is different. I also like it because I don’t have to go in and out of each room to adjust multiple ones.

It might also be nice to add a toggle/slider to the Home Screen to enable editing instead of having the controls always cluttering and to avoid possible user error

LtGruber

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

If you're planning to work on manual mode anyways, PLEASE also bring back 2 badly missed features from the previous app version:

1. Timer range up to 99 hours 99 minutes
2. Possibility to let the manual change last until the next automatic change (like someone leaving the house), and not only until the next time block.

Thanks.

MarkW

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

Design direction #2

With room tile info as bottom tile in LH column

MattieP

I’ve updated to the new version V6.5 and although it is better I still think that instead of boosting to maximum temperature there needs to be an option to boost for an hour to a temperature of your choice?? Or it defaults on the timer to an hour unless you manually adjust it yourself

Dalsim

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

Design direction #2 MUCH preferred!

I have been asking for something like this design for a long time. Ever since I purchased 10 radiator thermostats, I have found it very laborious changing the heating in different rooms during the winter months. I don't use geofencing because I work from home but my office is in the back of the house and I don't need the whole house heated all day, as I am in the back the whole time.

I really want an interface where I can turn on/off, change temps and durations from one screen, rather than having to go into each room or zone individually. I love the sliders to change temps and the on/off button. The only thing I think could be an issue is if the slider is too thin, will it be hard to select and slide on a phone screen?

Having the ability to quickly change rooms/zone settings from one screen would be a big help when you have many thermostats.

silverShnoop

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

It looks like these 2 designs are solving different use cases. I don't have a need for option 2, but believe option 1 is a big improvement.

Option 1 provides much clearer intuitive manual control settings (i.e. clear indication as to whether it is scheduled mode or manual mode)

I personally don't like option 2 as I don't have the need to adjust multiple room temperatures quickly at once (other than turn them all off which the quick actions gives me) and the need to introduce the settings bar here increases the size of the tile so it now needs more scrolling to see all the room temperatures. I.e. it's more difficult to see the temp of the house "at a glance".

VFlorin

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

@Jurian for me will be design direction #1.

BTW, as an request: why not implement the option to see water temperature on tour, when the boiler heat pump works, depending on the working mode (low, medium or high)?

Kingsley

I personally don't have any issue with the current method of adjusting room temperatures, in fact i really like it. My vote would be for you to fix some of the fundamental design issues with the system (like making early start work, solving reception issues, removing the ten room cap etc etc) before changing what I personally think is already better than competitor products.

Dalsim

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

It seems like a lot of people want the simplicity of option 1 but when you have as many radiator thermostats as I do, I need option 2.

It would be great to have different options depending on your use case and the Tado products you have. It makes sense to me that someone who has a room thermostat and perhaps a few radiator thermostats would find Option 1 very appealing. But for someone like me with a room thermostat, 10 radiator thermostats, and the hot water controller, option 2 solves a lot of problems.

Please give us the option to select both, depending on our use case and products 😊

FionaC

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

I much prefer the 2nd option. Makes adjusting multiple rooms quicker and easier. Visually more appealing too

stooby

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

For me, option 1 is preferable as it seems more focussed. It would be really good if at the same time, an option for ‘OPEN’ could be included which would open the radiator valve but NOT call for heat during that scheduled or manual duration. This would allow the radiator to scavenge heat if any was going around. This would be particularly useful for overnight unused rooms where you don’t want to switch the room off as it would get too cold and you don’t want it to call for heat probably half an hour after the boiler had run to keep the bedroom warm! The real icing would be a ‘TRV’ mode which would respect an upper set point but if that were more complicated, the ‘OPEN’ mode would be a very good alternative.

Nigelito

Design direction #1 (room screen improvements)

As others have said, I think it makes sense to perform manual changes on the room screen, to reduce the likelihood of accidental changes.

However I really like some of the other proposed changes to the home screen to add additional information (wavy lines, current temp, set temp, next change, etc), avoiding the need to go to the room screen in many cases.

Heleen_60

Design direction #2 (home screen control improvements)

Anything which reduces the number of taps is welcome for me. I seem to spend far too much time fiddling with temperatures and schedules. Still want to be able to make temporary changes in advance e.g. for early mornings, so that it's easy to revert back to original Schedule the next day.

Korinna

Design direction #1: Improvements to the room screen itself

It is easier to use on the smarphone and it can contain more data such as the temperature and humidity graphic.

Maybe direction 2 would be good for the desktop version of tado