On the disabled zone list: I’m curious what the use case of having many long-term disabled zones is.
Perhaps you have a section of your yard that doesn’t need water for the winter? Seems relatively rare.
I maintain that the 90% use case is a zone that is TEMPORARILY disabled due to mechanical problem, over watering, etc. For these cases, changing the UI to show disabled zones makes things better. And, changing the toggle to “Hide Disabled Zones” handles the 10% case as well. Still, disabled zones should be shown, WITH NUMBERS, on the black Set Watering Time screen, and numbers should be shown (unobtrusively) on the main page as well.
You’re correct: another way to fix the issue is a PAUSE. Paused zones would introduce a new state, which might create add’l confusion for users (what’s the difference between pause and disable?)
But, this might have some benefits for the folks who are accustomed to long-term disabling of zones.
Paused zones should show up grayed-out on the black Set Watering Times screen as well as the main page My Yard section.
Regarding my comment on directly accessing the Watering Time page:
Since many people are visual learners, the most likely place to start when you have a problem is the PICTORIAL represent of the zones under My Yard. Problem is, the functions available to you when you get to the Zone Details page, are exactly the kinds of things that you’ll set ONCE during setup, and only change rarely after setup. What would be more common? Click the zone, get the zone details page, and be able to quickly start/stop watering. This is exactly what my sprinkler guy did when I handed him my phone: clicked on the Zone 1 picture, got the Zone Details page, scrolled down, and asked me “Uh, what do I do now?” That’s b/c there is nothing he can do from this page. So, the easy fix: just add a Stop/Start Watering button that links to the Set Watering Times page, WITH the ZONE 1 already highlighted in the popup menu (to save time). But, one could spend a little more time and add a Watering status area at the top that would quickly let me turn on/off a zone when you doing the thing that is likely the most common: testing your zones. Can you do this from the Set Watering Times page? Absolutely, but why not make it easy to navigate for visual folks as well.
And, while you’re at it, why not add interesting non-static data about that zone on the Zone Details, like the last 5 times watering ran, etc.
On the zone numbers and lawn guys: sure, I’d love to have lawn guys that aren’t afraid of technology. But from what I’m hearing around here (5 neighbors with Rachio), 80% either have older “managers”, or they don’t speak English, or both. YMMV, we live in Dallas. ZERO percent of my neighbors lawn maintenance guys installed the app. Perhaps this will change over time, but these guys have 20+ clients in my immediate neighborhood. My sprinkler guy actually handed me his ruggedized flip phone, and said he’d never change.
So, this means they use the controller box when something needs to be addressed.
And, what is on the controller box? NUMBERS with a blue LED around the Rachio logo.
So, when they yell across the yard to turn off a zone, are they going to say “East Front Garden Patch”, or “Zone 3”? It’s all numbers for them. And, since it’s so simple to add them to the My Yard section, Zone Details, and Set Watering Times page, why not add them? The main argument against adding them would be “clutter”, which is legit, but if done right, could be unobtrusive and useful. Oddly, there’s already some “chartjunk” on the the Watering page popup, in the way of the up-down gray arrows for re-ordering, a convenience feature which doesn’t seem overly useful for folks who have 8 zones.
Anyway, happy to chat about UI/UX issues with anyone at Rachio, or test software… something I’ve been doing for 25 years.