This may be more useful for those who do TR workouts in resistance mode or have non-electronic trainers.
During a workout, it would be nice to be able to see what’s coming up next. For example, in the last 10 seconds of an interval, I get notified that I’m about to greatly increase my effort to 305w for 10 seconds. In ERG mode, this isn’t too much of an issue since the user would just anticipate it. For those in resistance mode, the user would have to process that they will be increasing their power by a lot in the next interval, but there isn’t any good indication as to how much. Visually, the graph does give some context, but usually, it’s best interpreted to understand big jumps in power is coming up but not necessarily communicate where (whether it’s indicated by a watt number or power zone number) unless the upcoming effort is right at FTP since it is visually marked.
Additional Background
From using the Peloton platform (I use Peloton, TR, and Zwift currently), doing power zone workouts on that platform can only be done using resistance, however, how the workout instructions are relayed and how the user perceives where they are at facilitate the flow of executing the workout nicely. In this case, instructions are typically told in 7 power zones and visually the user sees their current output in relation to these 7 zones. Understandably, the tradeoff is that the user is not working at or around a specific power but rather within a zone which may throw off intended training stimuli (e.g. tempo and sweet spot are both to be found in zone 3). For the most part, they use instructions like low, mid, or high zones to guide where in the zones work is to be done. When utilizing resistance mode, this kind of paradigm works rather well in terms of understanding upcoming instructions and current effort.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that TR goes down this route, but there may be some ideas there that may help facilitate resistance mode for indoor workouts and suggesting that from a low-hanging fruit, surfacing what’s coming up next (10s to the next interval) may be a good start.
My use of resistance mode isn’t as extensive since I do have a smart trainer, however, while I do have ERG mode, better understanding what’s next would be a nice-to-have.
TL;DR
As a user, I would like to be able to understand what I’m about to do in the workout so that I can prepare myself for the effort (in ERG mode, mental prep. in Resistance mode, mental and gearing/resistance prep).
Possible solutions: Interval notification preview (show what’s the next effort 10s before it begins). Color the graph intervals based on the zones they are in (at the very least the user would be able to process what zone they’ll be working in next).
Hypothesis: Better execution of workouts especially for those that use resistance mode or have non-electronic trainers.
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