Colorado 400t review (part 2)

I have owned and continue to own several Garmin hiking GPSs (as well as items from other other product lines including the GNS430 and the Forerunner and Edge 305). I think that my first was the GPS 16 and then the eTrex Legend and then the 60CSx and now I have a Colorado 400t. I generally have liked Garmin equipment and I've watched the user interfaces change and evolve over the years. When they came out with the Colorado series of GPSs it was obviously a big overhaul in their design for the hiking GPSs. I suspect that the firmware for all of the hiking GPSs had become a maintenance nightmare over the years as they adapted it to various models with various features. It became so unmanageable they decided to terminate development on it and move to a newer code base which they borrowed from the automobile GPS lines. I've been using the Colorado for some time now and comparing it to my 60CSx and I've come to believe that quite a lot of usability experience as well as not a few features has been lost when they adapted the automotive GPS firmware to the hiking GPS. I had been thinking that maybe it was just that I had to learn a new user interface and that with time I would come to appreciate what they have done with the 400t. However, as I've spent more time with the Colorado I'm less convinced of that.

Being a software developer myself, I think that the problem really comes down to the way that they adapted the user interface from the automobile, touchscreen based GPSs to the handheld trail oriented GPSs. Unfortunately it appears like there wasn't enough diversity of the widgets available to the developers in making the user interface. With the older user interfaces, you had a much larger diversity of special purpose widgets to give you the ability to work around the limitations of the screen real-estate and the limited number of switches you had in the GPS hardware. I think they tossed most of those custom defined widgets and dialog box designs and built the user interface out of a handful of general purpose widgets which were designed for a touchscreen user interface using backlighting. Overuse of those generic widget makes the user interface more cumbersome than it was with the older models.

For example, the older GPSs had a kind of list view for waypoints and an icon view for settings. Now both of those are a kind of button looking list view, as well as virtually every settings page, as well as practically everything in the user interface. The saying that we often say to describe this is "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". It looks to me like you had a widget which was that button looking list view which you probably borrowed from GPSs which had touchscreens, and they figured out how to use it for virtually every user interface element rather than developing custom widget or dialog box for different purposes.

Furthermore because that widget was designed for a touch screen user interface where large fonts and the 3D shading effects help with the computer human interaction. Applying it to a hiking GPS is kind of anachronistic on the colorado's smaller screen with no touch screen capability.

Here are some concrete ideas on how to improve the user interface on the 400t.

1. Bring back the status bar. On the top of display of the 60CSx there was a little battery icon which told the battery level and a few other things like if it had a satellite signal. Bring back that concept and at the bottom of the screen add a little status bar which has some basic info like:
1. Battery status
2. Satellite strength
3. HR monitor connected
4. Cadence sensor connected
5. Time (optionally)
6. Position (optionally)
2. Another special use widget that disappeared was for lack of a better name "Grid mode typing". This is the method used on previous generations of GPSs where there was a grid of letters and numbers and you used the four way buttons to navigate to the letter that you wanted and hit enter. The new colorado has the spin dial. There was some subtle advantages to the grid mode. Since it was a 2D grid, the number of clicks that you used to go to a specific letter was shorter. If you do the math most letters were only 4 clicks away from other letters. With the one dimensional roll through the letters using the clickwheel it is many times more. I suggest creating an OPTION to kind of reverse the way that you spell things out. Use a grid and the 5 way direction buttons to select the letter and use the click wheel to move horizontally through the name.
   
3. There are many places in the user interface where you have lists of something, for example waypoints and segments of a driving route. Currently these are done with the same button shaped list widget. I think that you need to reconsider using that widget to display all those different kinds of data. It is non optimal for a non-touchscreen user interface. Use a smaller tighter list without as much graphical clutter (i.e. no 3D button effects) for those data where it is useful to have lots of information on the screen rather than having it scrolled off the bottom. For example waypoints would be better displayed in a tighter list, with their icons next to them.
   
4. Configurable fonts. Since it isn't a touchscreen being used in a fast moving vehicle and you have the clickwheel and the precision of a 5-way and people are going to be using the colorado a lot while hiking where they can stare at the screen, give people the option to set the fonts down to something smaller to put more information on the screen.
5. Unfortunately, unlike the automotive models where you have practically infinite power and can operate with the backlight almost always on, with the colorado much of the time you are relying on the ambient light and the transflective display. The black fonts on grey buttons, the background images and the alpha blending that allow you to partially see through the buttons all decrease the visual contrast which makes it more difficult to work with the Colorado when you aren't using the backlight and when you have sunglesses on. Allow people in the definitions of the profiles, the option to use more primary colors and user interfaces elements which are higher contrast. I honestly find the user interface of the colorado difficult to read under tree cover with sunglasses on unless I have the backlighting on.
   
6. Also the small grey fonts on the black background identifying the data fields in things like the trip computer are virtually impossible to read without a high backlight while in dimmer ambiant light conditions. Higher contrast black on white would be good since you want to maximize battery life out on the trail and want to minimize the amount of time using backlighting.
   
7. There are several places where you use the button like list widget when a dialog box would be better. For example calibrating the altimeter. You have the 5 way, have the data there and let people use the 5way to move through the various fields using that and set the data with the click wheel.