When All You Want Is to Track Your Weight — Starting a Measurement

Two days ago we built the Measurement section: number items with a name, unit, and target on a task, a value you enter each time, and a trend of the last ten.

Using it ourselves, the start was complicated. To see your weight as a graph you had to create a template, turn Measurement on in the section settings, add an item, and then make a task from that template every time you measured. The goal was one thing, tracking weight, and four steps stood in front of it.

The first answer — stacking values in one task

The first idea was to skip the template. You make one task, and every time you enter a value, one more point lands on the graph. A single task called “Weight” carries the whole trend, so there is nothing to set up.

We built it in the morning and reverted it the same day.

The problem was that there is only one field for the value. That field ends up doing two jobs: entering a new measurement and correcting a wrong one. If you type 71.0 instead of 70.1 and fix it, both the wrong 71.0 and the right 70.1 stay on the graph as points. So each point needed a delete button, the places to enter a value grew to two (the task and the trend screen), and we had to add text explaining which one to use. Making one thing easier had created three things to explain.

One task = one value = one point on the graph

The rule we went back to is the original one. A task holds one value, and that value is one point on the graph. Enter the value again and that point is corrected. Measuring many times is the job of templates and routines, which give you a new task each time.

Under this rule, correcting and measuring never mix. Fix today’s task and today’s point changes. Measure tomorrow and you enter it on tomorrow’s task.

That brings back the original problem. The structure is right, but setting it up is complicated. What needed fixing was the setup, not the structure.

Starting a measurement — four steps on one screen

There is now a create button on Measurements in the Me tab. It opens one screen that asks only for this:

• Name, unit, target, and whether the goal is at most or at least the target — the four parts of a measurement item
• How often — every day, every week, or every month
• Time

When you create it, a template holding that item and a routine for that template are made together. At that time a task appears and a reminder arrives. Open the task, enter the value, and the graph grows by one point.

The screen doesn’t ask which weekday or which day of the month. It uses the day you create it. Create it on a Thursday and the option reads “Every Thursday”; create it on the 12th and it reads “Day 12 of every month”. To move it to another day, change the routine afterwards. This screen exists to make the first time short, so it doesn’t ask everything it could.

There is no field for the current value either, so that this screen doesn’t break the rule that values are entered on tasks. Instead, right after creating, a message says “Enter the value on the task that appears at that time.”

You don’t enter values on the Measurements screen

Measurements in the Me tab gathers the values you entered on your tasks. Tap a row and its trend opens.

While building the first answer, the trend screen had a row for entering a value and a button for deleting a point. Both went away with the revert. With two places to enter a value, you start wondering whether what you entered here is the same thing as what you entered there.

The trend screen has paths instead. Above the graph a row reads “Values are entered on tasks made from this template”, and tapping it opens that template. Below the graph the values are listed newest first, and tapping one opens the task it was entered on. A wrong value isn’t deleted; you go to that task and correct it.

We picked the wrong place to make easier

The first answer took “templates are complicated” and replied “remove the template.” But templates and routines were already the structure for doing the same thing many times, and a second path beside them that does the same job leaves the user to carry the difference between the two. What was complicated was the hands-on work of setting the structure up, and one screen could do that work instead.

Start a measurement from + on Measurements in the Me tab. The details are in the Measurement guide.