Overthinking on Subsurface mobile app UX

[James Cialdea]

On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Dirk Hohndel <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 03:46:49PM -0400, James Cialdea wrote:
>> - Since I haven't been specific about naming dive sites, most of my
>> dive sites have the same name as the trip.  That makes the world map
>> work fairly well, but it makes the dive list look very repetitive.
>> Maybe the dive row shouldn't specify the site if the site name is the
>> same as the trip name?
>
> I don't want to add features based on the oddities of how people name
> sites. I have long given up on trying to make this meet expectations. We
> have people who want a taxonomy (dive location country, state, county,
> city, ward, whatever). We have people who use the trip for the geographic
> location and the location for the site name. We have people who repeat
> every piece of information in the name of every location. I'm sure there
> are four other variations. There is no way we will be able to make
> everyone happy.
>
> So I'll follow the Apple philosophy: Obviously, the way we present things
> is magical, so if that doesn't work for you that means that you need to be
> doing it wrong :-)
>

I agree with you that it isn't worth trying to cover multiple paths to
do things.  But in this case, the repetition is obvious and it
clutters the screen.  Since it doesn't represent a new way to store or
organize the data, it seems to make sense to eliminate repetition.
This is especially useful for a day trip, where the dive site doesn't
change.

>> I noted some discussion in the past (I think it was on this thread)
>> about adding in the "dive type" (OC, CCR, FREE) to the dive list.  I
>> think that could be valuable, especially for those preparing for
>> certifications on different equipment.  Perhaps that could fit between
>> the dive time and the dive number?  Perhaps there could be a setting
>> to display it or not?
>
> Again, something that a few people like, many others don't care about
> (especially those of us for whom every single dive would get the same
> marker). And adding configuration options makes things harder to use,
> harder to document, and harder to test. So unless there is strong support
> from a LOT of users, I don't think I'll add that.
>

Fair enough.  That application is probably a better fit for filtering
in the desktop version anyway.