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As part of a Sleep Tracking mobile app, I’m going to display users a summarized report which will include data about their Bed Time and Wake Up Time, according to my app’s estimations. I’d like to enable users to make corrections to this data, in case it’s inaccurate. The solution I have at the moment is an ‘Edit’ icon which will open up a time picker when tapped. However, I found that most users won’t really bother to tap it, and if they do, they will most likely just change one value (e.g. bed time) and not the other one.

I’m looking for other solutions, perhaps involving a custom UI picker, which will make the time-picking UX a bit more cool. An ideal solution would be one that won’t involve opening up a dialog (time picker). Any ideas?

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    you could do a timeline?
    – Midas
    Dec 17, 2015 at 15:58
  • A dialog is kind of a perfect solution for this scenario. And what does "cool" means? I asked for the answer to this for decades and never got the same answer. Anyways, if you're more interested in UI than UX, may I suggest you look for answers at graphicdesign.stackexchange.com ?
    – Devin
    Dec 17, 2015 at 20:01
  • It's modal, and I don't know if it's cool, but I think Android's clock-face time picker is interesting. This doesn't really answer your question in any way, though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    – plainclothes
    Dec 17, 2015 at 20:07
  • "Cool" doesn't necessarily mean it should be instantly labeled as a 'graphic design' issue. An interaction or a UX scenario can also be cool :-) In this case, what I meant was that opening up a modal for time picking won't be the coolest solution for my particular context.
    – Goren Berdichevsky
    Dec 17, 2015 at 20:12
  • problem is I still have no idea what does "cool" means :(
    – Devin
    Dec 17, 2015 at 21:12

2 Answers 2

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Does this need to be accurate down to the minute? Assuming the estimates provided by the app are within, say, one hour of the actual time, and if you're willing to sacrifice a degree of accuracy in favor of efficiency and ergonomics (very important for mobile), you could do away with the time picker altogether and simply provide up/down buttons that would allow me to increment/decrement the time in 15-minute increments.

E.g., here I'm looking at the estimated bed time:

Bed Time 11:45  [+] [-]

However, I actually went to bed around 10:15. I tap the minus button and see the value decrement to 11:30:

Bed Time 11:30 [+] [-]

I tap the minus button 5 more times to decrement the time to 10:15.

Dead simple for a mobile UI, but you would sacrifice some accuracy. You could shorten the increment to 10 minutes.

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  • I would think most people would like to be as accurate as possible. If his app is quite accurate in the first place, most people would only be making small adjustments to say their bed time was actually 9:38 PM instead of 9:30 PM, and if I'm using the tickers to adjust the time accordingly, I would find it annoying for it to jump right to 9:45 PM. I would say in this case, accuracy is most important.
    – Cody Brantley
    Dec 17, 2015 at 20:12
  • True, but I think this really depends on the use case. For the scenario in question, I would prefer seamless interaction over accuracy. But then again, this could be the opposite for a different scenario.
    – Goren Berdichevsky
    Dec 18, 2015 at 9:23
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How about something which allows in-place edit? A suggestive example -

enter image description here

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