BikerDev

No not Cyclique. They’re more focused on introducing cyclists that have never met. We thought about that option too but were worried about the privacy and safety of that model. Not suggesting they don’t have that covered but we were conscious of ensuring peoples safety so kept it to known friends and the ability to ensure that cyclists could only connect with people they felt comfortable with becoming part of their friends circle.
The app we have is called Zuvolo. It’s on iOS and Android although Android is a little further behind than iOS as we built both platforms natively but have limited resource and time. We all have full-time jobs in development and UX.
As with all software, it’s a work in progress, it will never be finished and we know there are plenty of things to improve. But you gotta start somewhere right?!

PeteHski

Ah okay. Sounds interesting for anyone regularly organising group rides.

prj71

Facebook Groups, Facebook Events, Ride with GPS and Garnmin Livetrack stopped by to say Hi.

BikerDev

That’s what Nokia and Blockbuster thought. Implementation will always be key. Apple are never first to the party but when they do turn up, they turn up in style.

Not suggesting we’re Apple by the way, I wish! You can always find a reason to not do something.

bluehills3149

I'm in a cycle club and they use a webpage with upcoming rides where anyone can publish an upcoming ride with the distance, route and speed target, capped at a certain number of riders. I'm also in offshoot group from the club who use whatsapp to publicize rides but in a very informal basis as the club rides tend to require lots of organization and questions like - "anyone have a 6mm Allen key to raise Barry's seat..."

A few thoughts:
- There may be some value in having an app for existing clubs. Eg they can use a paid-for admin account to maintain membership, fee payments, info page, upcoming events etc and members can publish rides. I'm sure maintaining a web site is a major task for most clubs and replacing this with a 3rd party app would be welcome. Perhaps charging clubs say $99/year and then the club offering paid membership (say $25/year, first 5 rides free) of which you get a cut. The club model may work for other clubs like hiking, horse riding or similar. Or maybe only charge clubs if they have over 100 members to encourage new clubs.
- Make the rides be able to limited to those who have completed previous rides. Eg in order to sign up for a 100mi "A" pace ride, you must have completed a 50mi "A" pace ride and to do the 50mi ride you must have completed a "B" pace ride and so on.
- Liability issues. If an organizer plans a 100mi ride over "dead-mans-pass" and some newbie collapses on the side of the road, is the organizer liable?
-A major issue with my club's web-based rides is that the as the only way to communicate is via email to the organizer but this is clumsy. You want to be able to easily communicate info before or during the ride. Eg you signed up but are running late and want to inform the group or the lunch spot is closed so you're changing venue. This should push to your bike's device (eg Garmin/Wahoo) so you see it while riding.
-a criticism of the cyclique app is you need to sign up just to take a peek. Due to the above posts, I wanted to check this out but don't want to sign-up just to kick the tires.

PeteHski

I agree with this sentiment.
Garmin get away with some seriously crap, unintuitive, bug-ridden software simply because there isn't a lot else on the market. They could easily become the Nokia of the GPS world at some future point.
Strava is far from perfection too. The data analysis/training metrics/planning side of their app is particularly weak.

PeteHski

This ^ right here is why I haven't actually used Cyclique yet!

BikerDev

This is so insightful. This includes many of the ideation sessions we've had just throwing out some ideas out there to figure out whether they would be worth having and considering some of the implementation from a backend and frontend perspective. You should join our team

BikerDev

This is interesting. It's something we've battled with since inception. I've always argued that we need a way to give people the option to get a feel for the app before signing up but we've struggled with the way it has been built. It's so reliant on our backend services and APIs we're not entirely sure what we could offer people if they don't sign up first and create a username. Nonetheless, we keep trying to figure it out and I agree with you wholeheartedly.

prj71

The thing is what you are trying to do already exists.

I belong to a few private facebook cycling groups. For mountain biking, people announce time, date and place to meet up and ride. For road biking they do same along with a posting a link for the route that was created in Ride with GPS that can be downloaded onto numerous bike computers. If anyone wants to track where anyone else is at you can use Garmin live tracking or there is an app called Glympse.

Then if you develop an app and charge a monthly subscription fee...less people are going to want to use it.

BikerDev

Most new to market products already exist in one form or another but the way it has been approached from a UX and implementation point of view is what makes it stand out from the crowd.

We don’t intend to charge the user, we’re thinking more along the lines of charging the organisers. We want to be able to offer the service free to cyclists.

The implementation you are referring to requires a number of different services and products. We’d like a single point of entry.

PeteHski

Do you find Garmin Livetrack to be reliable or intuitive? A few of us use it occasionally (or at least attempt to use it) and I find it hard work to configure and prone to failure. I honestly find the whole Garmin software hard work and I only tolerate it because there aren't many alternatives. If Apple made bike head units I'm pretty sure I'd switch instantly.

BikerDev

If you get the time, I'd be really curious to know how you'd compare our version of live tracking vs Garmin.
No need to consider other parts of the app, just simply create an account (it would be impossible to do live tracking without this and it's free) hook up with a few friends and simply share your location with each other and see what you think. As I mentioned previously, we don't store any privacy data, we have no interest in that, and if you want to delete your account, you can simply do so in settings and it's immediate and your account is fully wiped, there's zero possibility to retrieve it!
No worries if not but I'd definitely value your opinion. Just search for Zuvolo on the App Store if you're interested. Many thanks.

PeteHski

I'd be happy to give that a try, but it's only going to work for me when cycling if I can see the location data directly on my Garmin head unit. When riding my phone is hidden in my back pocket. But I will try it off the bike to see how it functions and it could still be pretty useful to locate other riders on the map when stopping at feed stations or cafes etc.

BikerDev

Thanks PeteHski - yes totally get where you’re coming from in terms of phone hidden away. In the past, we have tended to use it just as you suggested, leave the app running whilst phone is locked and then take it out when needed to see where buddies are, your friends can obviously also do the same to find out whereabouts you are as well. We find it nice to have the bigger screen for a broader overview of everyone.

PeteHski

Sounds ideal. A group of us are doing the L'Etape du Tour Sportive next month, so this will be perfect for keeping track of where everyone is.

prj71

I've had no problem with it at all and have found the Garmin software easy to use. Seems pretty straight forward. Start livetrack and and share the link with whoever you want.

Me and few friends sometimes use Glympse as well.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...hl=en_US&gl=US

PeteHski

I have my Garmin set up to start Livetrack automatically, but it often doesn't start for no obvious reason. If I ride with say half a dozen people, chances of everyone getting Livetrack to work first time are slim at best. When it does work it's okay, but I wouldn't say it's intuitive. I think Garmin software is a bug-ridden dog's dinner of a mess on all sorts of levels. But that's been discussed at length elsewhere. I use it because ultimately it does what I need, but it's not particularly nice to use.

BikerDev

PeteHski we ran an event this morning for cyclists. Thought I’d post a screenshot of how the riders look to show you how the app looks when viewing other riders. They were obviously in ‘event mode’ in the app so all riders were visible. But when you just share with friends it’s a similar experience but just a few of you on the map without the countdown and other buttons.


Zuvolo app.

prj71

Interesting. I have not experienced that with my Edge530 and Garmin Connect.