Poor App Design – Basis Peak Ultimate Fitness and Sleep Tracker Review

This is the story of Beauty (the watch) and the Beast (the app): The watch: I've had more than one of these because the first died young. That said, it's a reasonably good device that's really comfortable, attractive if you upgrade the band and performs as advertised. Can't see it in darkness but, eh. The set up is potentially easy but dicey. If it goes well, it can take a while but is automatic. But. In my second experience it didn't go well so I had to tinker equally as long to get it to work. The App: The worst I've ever used and I've used many fitness trackers. Some developers are great user interface designers. Most are not. That is the case here. There's a jumble of micro-sized things on the screen and miles of wasted space. Why on earth have a fitness app with fine line, tiny text, useless micro sized icons and images? Why side scroll when so much real estate is empty? The earn it concept that I'm sure dev geeks thought was clever - and maybe it is - is too badly executed to be truly motivating. Designed by left brain developers, it works. It's just clunky and ugly. You may not need a manual to learn it but it looks like you would — This app is the unfortunate victim of overthinking and bad UI design. Compare this to almost any other and the difference is striking but not in a good way. More like a "wt..." way. This is far from the streamlined, pick-up-and-use, eye candy we've all come to expect. Sure there's a lot of data and yes we data-holics like that it's all there and that it can export (even if we never do) but this really is a hot mess... On the positive, I'm grateful it plays well with others – shares data with apps that have a better interface. . .For this an extra star.
Review by AppKitten on Basis Peak Ultimate Fitness and Sleep Tracker.