Feedback: Heatmap changes

[GuyBeels]

What have you done to Heatmaps?  I do not care about businesses, or where other people have run, walked, or biked, and the new color selection interface does not allow basemap changes from the same interface (as it should).  Also, as I zoom out, the once-useful aggregation of workouts (showing a circle and number at scales where the actual paths get tiny and useless) is now gone.  Writing this as a cartographer, recent changes are not an improvement.  Is there a way to recover the old display mode?

[jrgolding]

Hi Nicky. The orange dots were way better, this was one of the great features of Strava premium and I'm really disappointed that it's gone. I loved seeing the areas I've covered - that's all it needs to show. While I appreciate the effort that goes in to it I think the point of the heat map has been missed - it's not a tool to find activities or view photos, it's a tool to visualise coverage. The orange dots worked brilliantly. The new one has either tiny specs to show the actual routes taken, or massive photos that don't cover an area accurately or adequately - I assume they've been made bigger so you can see the content of the photo (which anyone looking at a heat map is not there to look at). Please re-instate, it wasn't broken! 

[Trevvy]

No good if you don’t take photos and i find they obscure other parts of the Heatmap. Can they be turned off when required? In any case, the clusters were far more useful so lets have them back.

[uzaks]

Agreed. 

[Bigsexyboomer]

The pictures are kind of cool, but clusters was an addiction. It told me how many times i had ridden a trail system. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and wait to see how you have improved. Just know we are a small sample of people upset that you took away the clusters.

[uzaks]

Agreed. Yes, there are far more people who are upset that the clusters are gone. 

[tono1020]

In my scenario the activity clusters were perfect: I do the activities on the Tacx indoor trainer and upload them to Strava automatically using Garmin connect. I don't see an easy way to use photos in my process. Without activity clusters, however, nothing can be seen in a larger area.

[GuyBeels]

Photos are nice, and thanks.  But most people don't take them for most activities.  And I'm looking forward to the further changes you mentioned.  But keep in mind that cartographically speaking, "fancy" is not your friend.  It will be hard to beat a simple symbol with a number inside it to indicate the number of activities in a place when zoomed out far enough that the actual paths look like a dot, or a little knot.  Gosh, that sounds like an activity cluster!  There may be more cool features for you to add, but for that purpose I really think you could stop looking for a better solution.

[BjornarSoreng]

Hi Nicky. The activity clusters were perfect in my opinion. Hope you bring them back. The new photo/photo option is great addition! Thx!

[dslomian]

Thank you, photos may please those that acutally take them while exercising, I do very occasionally when on holiday in new place, but rarely post them on Strava, this is a training tool for me and being able to see where I ran is a cherry on top, unfortunately at the moment I can't see the heatmaps when zoomed out and it's not a good thing, please bring back the old clusters the way they were, I don't think you can make something more useful than that, or at least give us an option to toggle them on. Thank you!

[Bigsexyboomer]

#bringbackclusters