Lowest Necessary Requirements

Published: 2023-08-10 9:27 AM

Category: Technology | Tags: foss, onboarding, apps, usage, tools

A goal of mine this year is to ride my bike more. I'm starting a new job that is bike-commutable, which is a big deal when you live in a rural area. I've been riding more just to get the kinks worked out of my joints (and the bike) and I decided it would be fun to keep track of my rides.

I created a Strava account yesterday before a ride after trying out a FOSS Android app that I couldn't quite figure out. Comparing the onboarding experince of a multi-million dollar company vs a single developer isn't really apples to apples, but it got me thinking about what I really need from a tracking app.

Ride discoverability is enticing, but living in a rural spot, there are plenty of roads to explore. I'm not really interested in maintaining another social network, so I don't think I would get too much into following people. Strava offers all of these extra features and it was easy to start, but I'm not planning on using those.

The effort of setting up the FOSS activity tracker takes more up front, but it does just what I want without the extra stuff. I think for me, taking more time to get a single-purpose app working builds buy-in because it's tailored for me without all the extra fluff.