kc1
Well-known member
I thought it might be helpful to potential buyers to see what you get with the i-Remote app if like me you assumed it would join-up the ownership experience in a meaningful way. Unfortunately it's very poorly designed - staggeringly so in fact - almost as if they accepted the first effort of a project for a first year tech student at the Munich University. It certainly doesn't look as if it's been usability tested by anyone who knows what they're doing.
My observations below are from the Android app, version 1.3(1317-PROD_ECE). I've no idea if the iPhone app is as bad.
First up, We’re forced to enter a PIN (no option to disable it). Apparently we’re not trusted to either have a security lock on our phones or take the risk ourselves that someone with access to our phones could get open the app and…do…well not much of any consequence as it turns out. Oh and just to be doubly sure, most times you have to enter it twice.
We’re presented with a screen apparently designed by somebody who thinks the ‘who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire’ look is cool. Aesthetics aside, there are already many obviously usability issues: low contrast blue on blue text and icons; meaningless waste of real estate at the top, with the label ‘status’ 4x larger than the status information under it; no obvious indication of what is clickable and what the consequences of doing so are…We can see already this app is amateur hour effort, but it gets much worse.
Arguably, knowing the currently (estimated) range is the most valuable bit of information – but it’s useless if it’s not up to date. The first picture shows the information is more than 7 hours out of date. That would be less problematic if you could just tap something to force the app to get up-to-date information…but you can’t. In fact the only way to force the app to communicate with the car is flashing the headlights or unlocking the doors, but even that doesn’t necessarily update the state of charge information.
Tapping ‘Status’ does nothing. The plug symbol next to the range doesn’t indicate if the car is plugged in – another (small) icon appears next to the rear wheel in the picture. Tapping on it when it’s red shows ‘Charging error’ but doesn’t tell you what the error is or what you can do about it.
There’s much written elsewhere about how dubious we should be about the accuracy of the range estimate, but this app doesn’t make it any better. According to the app my full charge range varied by 46% from day to the next (same outside temperature).
While we’re on temperature, one of the things my wife wanted to do is get the car’s heating going before getting inside it. We can do that by tapping the fan icon at the bottom. Trouble is we can’t change our mind. So when I took my son to his sports match, got the heating going ready for departure only to find there was extra time in the game, all I succeeded in doing was reducing my range for the way home.
Tapping on the range estimate does nothing. So does tapping the timer. Quite what ‘Until…’ the day means under the timer is not clear. I suspect some poor translation from German. It actually means that’s when it’s next set to be preconditioned. To get to that we have to tap the small clock icon [not the large timer information].
Here we get to set the 3 times that we can schedule charging and precondition. Those limitations are well discussed elsewhere. What’s worth looking at here is again the poor usability. First, it’s impossible to tell it to say, be ready in a specified time from now (either charging or preconditioning) – we have to program a specific time. We have to click on one of the entries, scroll to set the time and tap ‘Every…’ day to select which day(s) it applies to. It’s not obvious what to do if we want to be a one off, rather than each week. Tapping repeat doesn’t toggle to once. In fact to get it to happen just once we have to tap ‘Every <day>’ and then untick all the days (including today). (Yes, really, it’s hard to imagine how they could have made it less intuitive.)
At the bottom we can toggle if we want the battery preconditioned. There’s no way to say if we want the cabin temperature pre-set or not, let alone to what temperature.
To make sure the settings stick we have to tap the tick symbol in the top right. That takes us back to the large time screen. Tapping that again shows the sending to vehicle information [at the top this time, not at the bottom where it was before]. Alarmingly, underneath, it has un-ticked all the times previously set including the one we just set, leading us to assume temporarily that it is un-setting the previously set times while setting the new one. After the usual delay, we get a message saying the charging has been performed [rather than that the information has been sent to the car]!
Perhaps the next most useful function [in theory] is to send a destination to the car’s sat nav. To get to this we have to scroll right from the car screen to ‘Mobility’ (why ‘mobility’ is anyone’s guess, since it is to do with addresses, not being mobile).
Tapping on the small flag icon in the big circle, we get to choose between last searches, saved ‘favourites’ and destinations that have been previously set. Helpfully it shows whether they’re in range. Unhelpfully it doesn’t let us set one as the new destination. To do that we have to tap on it, opening a screen showing the same information again in most of the screen with the options now to add to favourites or to send to the car. But not the car’s list of destinations… because it’s already there - making the function fairly useless. Instead to an email message that you have to open several menu options deep.
So, while sending a previous destination is in practice pretty useless, the idea of sending a new destination should be more helpful.
If it’s an address from our phone contacts we could try clicking the person icon at the top right, then select a contact from our list. For about half the contacts I tried it couldn’t successfully read the address and said, incorrectly ‘No address is stored for this contact’. I couldn’t work out what it didn’t like about the addresses. When it can find an address, it forces us to enter the PIN again, before displaying it.
It display’s it using the German format (building number after the Street name), and although we can send it to the vehicle [as a message], the only way we can add it to ‘favourites’ is to get in the car, accept it as a destination, then pull it up in the Destinations list and then tap Add to Favourites
For addresses we don’t already know, we have to tap on the small unintelligible icon underneath the ‘Mobility’ banner. This opens a version of Google maps but takes a bit longer to appear as it loads up icons from the ChargeNow network that slowly obliterate the view of the map. If we zoom out, these icons are [very slowly] replaced by icons with tiny numbers in them indicating multiple charge points. We turn these off by deselecting them from the list that appears if we tap on the layers icon next at the top.
The first two translucent (why?) icons overlaid on map pinpoint your location, the car’s [last known] location. The next one zooms the map out to show the range boundaries on comfort and eco settings…or is it eco and ecoplus? There’s no way of telling.
The last icon with road junctions symbols toggles satellite vs map view (again, strange choice of symbol).
To enter a destination, we have to search for it, by tapping the magnifying glass at the top. When we start entering characters, a list appears of likely matches – not an open Google search quick suggestion, but a list of charging points. If we tap on an item on the list, it doesn’t select that as a destination, as we might expect, it merely centres the map on it, and leaves the first characters you typed in the box. If we manage to find the icon amidst the others, tapping on it produces a partial address at the bottom, uselessly and, nominally, pricing and range information – but as you can see both are often useless.
Tapping on it the address doesn’t make the charging information any more readable but brings up an address under the heading ‘Contact’ (which doesn’t mean you can contact them), and three new icons. The star toggles empty to solid but gives no indication of what it does (adds to favourites, maybe?). Tapping the road junction icon takes us to not to driving directions but public transport options or on foot, depending on the new 3d-style of toggle button at the top. Tapping the last icon sends the address to the car (as a message).
All in all, pretty cumbersome. Actually, useless, compared to simply sending it direct from Google Maps in a browser or on your phone (with the right add-in installed), with the added benefit [/essential feature] of being able to search any address quickly – not just charging stations.
And all that’s when it’s actually ‘working’. My experience [in central London] is often of greyed-out/unavailable options, even with the car parked outside, and when the car’s SIM card is in contact (it will for some reason allow me to un/lock the doors but not use the mobility functions). As you can see in the picture on the left, the there is a data (wifi) connection, so my assumption is, it must be the GPS sensor in the car that had lost its connection.
The last screen (scrolling to the left from the screen with the car picture), is labelled ‘Efficiency’, and has some meaningless pattern in the picture below. Tapping the book icon brings up a contents page of eco driving tips which provide nothing that the average buyer wouldn’t have already been bombarded with elsewhere (brochure, website, manuals, aftersales promo book, etc.)
Tapping ‘CO2’ brings up a gimmick number claiming to be the amount of carbon dioxide ‘saved’ by having used your i3 instead of…well that’s just it – it depends how we might have otherwise travelled, in which type of car, and presumably not net of the carbon expended in the manufacture, etc, etc. Pretty Meaningless.
Tapping the histogram icon produces a quadrant with statistics showing electricity consumption for the last trip at the top and for all trips at the bottom relative to the ‘community’ – (in your country/everywhere? Again pretty meaningless.). Quite why the diameter symbol is used on the numbers below (is it supposed to lend a 'scientific' feel?) or why the community is brighter than ours is again only known by the [amateur/hobbyist?] designer.
The only other thing to tap is the cog at the top, bringing up ‘Settings’. ‘Change PIN’ does what it implies, although when we tap on it we’re asked for a PIN, but it’s not clear whether it wants the existing or the new PIN. Entering a new PIN throws up an error message that doesn’t make sense (‘…log out to select a new PIN’).
‘Your dealer’ merely shows the address, and allows you to send it to the vehicle. Pretty useless. Unless you need to go back and buy another car? / can’t remember where you bought it? ‘About’ gives a software version number (useless). ‘Imprint’ must be a bad translation of something German, and brings up contact details and BMW in Germany (useless). I thought Feedback might have been an in-app issue reporting tool, with screenshots, but no, it merely launches an email to [email protected]. (useless). Tapping BMW Routes turns it from on to off. No indication of what it is. Google takes me to a page that explains what it is, but despite enabling it, it hasn’t done anything for me. (useless)
Tapping ‘Units’ doesn’t allow us to specify which units we want, but instead offers Metric, English or Japanese. What if we want miles and kg? In fact selecting English still uses the metric kWh…poor.
‘Community’ is where we op in/out of sharing driving statistics, with…well it’s not quite clear. The message shows interesting use of the passive tense, which doesn’t indicate all the parties to whom our data could be shared.
Underneath it says (the wrong way round) ‘Reset statistics’ and a message saying what will happen if you do, but it’s not obvious whether this happens as soon as you tap somewhere (where?) or in fact if it happens when you turn off/on the toggle button above it.
I’ve no idea what ‘Log out’, at the bottom actually logs you out of – the app? The community? Something else?
Tapping on the car icon, or the car picture, mileage in the [overly] large area. Can’t think why we’d want to know that [prominently] on the app. Underneath it shows if anything is open, but tapping on them does nothing. You have to scroll past the [useless] service inspection date to get to ‘Remote control’
‘Remote control’ should be one of the most useful features. In fact it only lets us unlock and lock the doors or flash the lights.
But it takes so long to send the command first to BMW’s servers and then from servers to the car that offers no value at all in say unlocking the car on your way to it or looking for your car in a car park. The proud message that it flashed the lights ‘successfully’ is laughable...and ultimately useless.
In practice it only works to lock the doors if you forgot. But even then, the time delay makes the status in ‘Vehicle information’ screen out of sync, with the remote control section (useless). It doesn’t help that the locked / unlocked ‘buttons’ on the remote control page are not greyed-out/disabled depending on the status.
In the modern parlance, my kids would call this this app "a FAIL", since it is so poorly designed. Obviously many things have poor functionality and usability that still market well, but with only 110 other downloads from the Android Play store, this couldn't even mask it's shabby design behind a claim of popularity. I do hope BMW invests in some more qualified designers for the next iteration, but based on the my experience with the poorly trained, part-time specialist services and features for i-customers, that we've had so far, I'm not getting my hopes up.
My observations below are from the Android app, version 1.3(1317-PROD_ECE). I've no idea if the iPhone app is as bad.
First up, We’re forced to enter a PIN (no option to disable it). Apparently we’re not trusted to either have a security lock on our phones or take the risk ourselves that someone with access to our phones could get open the app and…do…well not much of any consequence as it turns out. Oh and just to be doubly sure, most times you have to enter it twice.
We’re presented with a screen apparently designed by somebody who thinks the ‘who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire’ look is cool. Aesthetics aside, there are already many obviously usability issues: low contrast blue on blue text and icons; meaningless waste of real estate at the top, with the label ‘status’ 4x larger than the status information under it; no obvious indication of what is clickable and what the consequences of doing so are…We can see already this app is amateur hour effort, but it gets much worse.
Arguably, knowing the currently (estimated) range is the most valuable bit of information – but it’s useless if it’s not up to date. The first picture shows the information is more than 7 hours out of date. That would be less problematic if you could just tap something to force the app to get up-to-date information…but you can’t. In fact the only way to force the app to communicate with the car is flashing the headlights or unlocking the doors, but even that doesn’t necessarily update the state of charge information.
Tapping ‘Status’ does nothing. The plug symbol next to the range doesn’t indicate if the car is plugged in – another (small) icon appears next to the rear wheel in the picture. Tapping on it when it’s red shows ‘Charging error’ but doesn’t tell you what the error is or what you can do about it.
There’s much written elsewhere about how dubious we should be about the accuracy of the range estimate, but this app doesn’t make it any better. According to the app my full charge range varied by 46% from day to the next (same outside temperature).
While we’re on temperature, one of the things my wife wanted to do is get the car’s heating going before getting inside it. We can do that by tapping the fan icon at the bottom. Trouble is we can’t change our mind. So when I took my son to his sports match, got the heating going ready for departure only to find there was extra time in the game, all I succeeded in doing was reducing my range for the way home.
Tapping on the range estimate does nothing. So does tapping the timer. Quite what ‘Until…’ the day means under the timer is not clear. I suspect some poor translation from German. It actually means that’s when it’s next set to be preconditioned. To get to that we have to tap the small clock icon [not the large timer information].
Here we get to set the 3 times that we can schedule charging and precondition. Those limitations are well discussed elsewhere. What’s worth looking at here is again the poor usability. First, it’s impossible to tell it to say, be ready in a specified time from now (either charging or preconditioning) – we have to program a specific time. We have to click on one of the entries, scroll to set the time and tap ‘Every…’ day to select which day(s) it applies to. It’s not obvious what to do if we want to be a one off, rather than each week. Tapping repeat doesn’t toggle to once. In fact to get it to happen just once we have to tap ‘Every <day>’ and then untick all the days (including today). (Yes, really, it’s hard to imagine how they could have made it less intuitive.)
At the bottom we can toggle if we want the battery preconditioned. There’s no way to say if we want the cabin temperature pre-set or not, let alone to what temperature.
To make sure the settings stick we have to tap the tick symbol in the top right. That takes us back to the large time screen. Tapping that again shows the sending to vehicle information [at the top this time, not at the bottom where it was before]. Alarmingly, underneath, it has un-ticked all the times previously set including the one we just set, leading us to assume temporarily that it is un-setting the previously set times while setting the new one. After the usual delay, we get a message saying the charging has been performed [rather than that the information has been sent to the car]!
Perhaps the next most useful function [in theory] is to send a destination to the car’s sat nav. To get to this we have to scroll right from the car screen to ‘Mobility’ (why ‘mobility’ is anyone’s guess, since it is to do with addresses, not being mobile).
Tapping on the small flag icon in the big circle, we get to choose between last searches, saved ‘favourites’ and destinations that have been previously set. Helpfully it shows whether they’re in range. Unhelpfully it doesn’t let us set one as the new destination. To do that we have to tap on it, opening a screen showing the same information again in most of the screen with the options now to add to favourites or to send to the car. But not the car’s list of destinations… because it’s already there - making the function fairly useless. Instead to an email message that you have to open several menu options deep.
So, while sending a previous destination is in practice pretty useless, the idea of sending a new destination should be more helpful.
If it’s an address from our phone contacts we could try clicking the person icon at the top right, then select a contact from our list. For about half the contacts I tried it couldn’t successfully read the address and said, incorrectly ‘No address is stored for this contact’. I couldn’t work out what it didn’t like about the addresses. When it can find an address, it forces us to enter the PIN again, before displaying it.
It display’s it using the German format (building number after the Street name), and although we can send it to the vehicle [as a message], the only way we can add it to ‘favourites’ is to get in the car, accept it as a destination, then pull it up in the Destinations list and then tap Add to Favourites
For addresses we don’t already know, we have to tap on the small unintelligible icon underneath the ‘Mobility’ banner. This opens a version of Google maps but takes a bit longer to appear as it loads up icons from the ChargeNow network that slowly obliterate the view of the map. If we zoom out, these icons are [very slowly] replaced by icons with tiny numbers in them indicating multiple charge points. We turn these off by deselecting them from the list that appears if we tap on the layers icon next at the top.
The first two translucent (why?) icons overlaid on map pinpoint your location, the car’s [last known] location. The next one zooms the map out to show the range boundaries on comfort and eco settings…or is it eco and ecoplus? There’s no way of telling.
The last icon with road junctions symbols toggles satellite vs map view (again, strange choice of symbol).
To enter a destination, we have to search for it, by tapping the magnifying glass at the top. When we start entering characters, a list appears of likely matches – not an open Google search quick suggestion, but a list of charging points. If we tap on an item on the list, it doesn’t select that as a destination, as we might expect, it merely centres the map on it, and leaves the first characters you typed in the box. If we manage to find the icon amidst the others, tapping on it produces a partial address at the bottom, uselessly and, nominally, pricing and range information – but as you can see both are often useless.
Tapping on it the address doesn’t make the charging information any more readable but brings up an address under the heading ‘Contact’ (which doesn’t mean you can contact them), and three new icons. The star toggles empty to solid but gives no indication of what it does (adds to favourites, maybe?). Tapping the road junction icon takes us to not to driving directions but public transport options or on foot, depending on the new 3d-style of toggle button at the top. Tapping the last icon sends the address to the car (as a message).
All in all, pretty cumbersome. Actually, useless, compared to simply sending it direct from Google Maps in a browser or on your phone (with the right add-in installed), with the added benefit [/essential feature] of being able to search any address quickly – not just charging stations.
And all that’s when it’s actually ‘working’. My experience [in central London] is often of greyed-out/unavailable options, even with the car parked outside, and when the car’s SIM card is in contact (it will for some reason allow me to un/lock the doors but not use the mobility functions). As you can see in the picture on the left, the there is a data (wifi) connection, so my assumption is, it must be the GPS sensor in the car that had lost its connection.
The last screen (scrolling to the left from the screen with the car picture), is labelled ‘Efficiency’, and has some meaningless pattern in the picture below. Tapping the book icon brings up a contents page of eco driving tips which provide nothing that the average buyer wouldn’t have already been bombarded with elsewhere (brochure, website, manuals, aftersales promo book, etc.)
Tapping ‘CO2’ brings up a gimmick number claiming to be the amount of carbon dioxide ‘saved’ by having used your i3 instead of…well that’s just it – it depends how we might have otherwise travelled, in which type of car, and presumably not net of the carbon expended in the manufacture, etc, etc. Pretty Meaningless.
Tapping the histogram icon produces a quadrant with statistics showing electricity consumption for the last trip at the top and for all trips at the bottom relative to the ‘community’ – (in your country/everywhere? Again pretty meaningless.). Quite why the diameter symbol is used on the numbers below (is it supposed to lend a 'scientific' feel?) or why the community is brighter than ours is again only known by the [amateur/hobbyist?] designer.
The only other thing to tap is the cog at the top, bringing up ‘Settings’. ‘Change PIN’ does what it implies, although when we tap on it we’re asked for a PIN, but it’s not clear whether it wants the existing or the new PIN. Entering a new PIN throws up an error message that doesn’t make sense (‘…log out to select a new PIN’).
‘Your dealer’ merely shows the address, and allows you to send it to the vehicle. Pretty useless. Unless you need to go back and buy another car? / can’t remember where you bought it? ‘About’ gives a software version number (useless). ‘Imprint’ must be a bad translation of something German, and brings up contact details and BMW in Germany (useless). I thought Feedback might have been an in-app issue reporting tool, with screenshots, but no, it merely launches an email to [email protected]. (useless). Tapping BMW Routes turns it from on to off. No indication of what it is. Google takes me to a page that explains what it is, but despite enabling it, it hasn’t done anything for me. (useless)
Tapping ‘Units’ doesn’t allow us to specify which units we want, but instead offers Metric, English or Japanese. What if we want miles and kg? In fact selecting English still uses the metric kWh…poor.
‘Community’ is where we op in/out of sharing driving statistics, with…well it’s not quite clear. The message shows interesting use of the passive tense, which doesn’t indicate all the parties to whom our data could be shared.
Underneath it says (the wrong way round) ‘Reset statistics’ and a message saying what will happen if you do, but it’s not obvious whether this happens as soon as you tap somewhere (where?) or in fact if it happens when you turn off/on the toggle button above it.
I’ve no idea what ‘Log out’, at the bottom actually logs you out of – the app? The community? Something else?
Tapping on the car icon, or the car picture, mileage in the [overly] large area. Can’t think why we’d want to know that [prominently] on the app. Underneath it shows if anything is open, but tapping on them does nothing. You have to scroll past the [useless] service inspection date to get to ‘Remote control’
‘Remote control’ should be one of the most useful features. In fact it only lets us unlock and lock the doors or flash the lights.
But it takes so long to send the command first to BMW’s servers and then from servers to the car that offers no value at all in say unlocking the car on your way to it or looking for your car in a car park. The proud message that it flashed the lights ‘successfully’ is laughable...and ultimately useless.
In practice it only works to lock the doors if you forgot. But even then, the time delay makes the status in ‘Vehicle information’ screen out of sync, with the remote control section (useless). It doesn’t help that the locked / unlocked ‘buttons’ on the remote control page are not greyed-out/disabled depending on the status.
In the modern parlance, my kids would call this this app "a FAIL", since it is so poorly designed. Obviously many things have poor functionality and usability that still market well, but with only 110 other downloads from the Android Play store, this couldn't even mask it's shabby design behind a claim of popularity. I do hope BMW invests in some more qualified designers for the next iteration, but based on the my experience with the poorly trained, part-time specialist services and features for i-customers, that we've had so far, I'm not getting my hopes up.
