RouteGadget unpopular?

[DJM]

We made a particular effort to encourage JK 2014 competitors to draw up their routes on RouteGadget 2, specifically mentioning it on the JK website and even pointing to online help for new users. The results are pretty disappointing:-

...........2012 ....2013 ....2014
Day 1 ...14.9% ...13.7% ...8.2%
Day 2 ...15.1% ...13.9% ...8.2%
Day 3 ...15.1% ...13.3% ...8.5%
Day 4 ....9.1% .....6.3% ...2.8%

The table above shows the percentage of starters who drew up their routes on RG at the 2012, 2013 and 2014 JKs. The decline which started last year has accelerated, so much so that the overall proportion of those using RG has dropped by 47% since 2012.

Any suggestions why?

[AndyC]

Was there Wifi available at assembly/accomodation? I'm judging that as the relays are low (when people are looking to get home) people like to do RG while it is fresh in their mind.

[AncientFootsteps]

Any suggestions why

?

Because, although the Day 2/3 orienteering was both fun and (very) challenging, there was very little meaningful route choice.

If you look at the aggregated routes on RG2 they form a solid thick line with barely any deviation. I don't blame the planners for this - it is in the nature of the terrain.

However route choice does seem to be a bit of endangered species. Can we have some elephant traps for the robots who just run a bearing please?

[DJM]

Could be ... but that doesn't explain the drop in Day 1 users (or Day 4).

In any case, RG is not just about showing route choice. It's also about where mistakes are made, where time is lost and playing your race against others.

[SeanC]

Probably people are out of the RouteGadget habit with the java security problems in version 1. Should get better again as people get used to RouteGadget2. It might help if all clubs started to phase out RouteGadget1? Also has there been any publicity in Focus/CompassSport yet about RG2?

[MIE]

There is a new version of the "original" RouteGadget that, also, doesn't
use Java. AFAIK, no UK club using RG1 has upgraded to this new version.

It should also be remembered that the "new" RG1 and RG2 both use HTML5
and this is not necessarily available on all the older systems. It may take a
while for the "general" user to catch up (unless you create links to RG1 and
RG2 so that those that can use RG1(still) and not RG2(yet) have a portal.
(Remember that if you create a route in RG2 it can still be viewed in RG1
and vice-versa).
After a week it is probably no longer worth doing anything as, from past
experience, most will be working on the last event (ie yesterday)

For comparison :

BNC2014 16%+ on RouteGadget2
UKOL2(Sunday after BNC) 11%+

[DJM]

It should also be remembered that the "new" RG1 and RG2 both use HTML5
and this is not necessarily available on all the older systems.

True, but this may only account for some of the "defaulters". A quick analysis of the browsers used by those accessing the JK website over the last month suggests that some 80% are using one which is HTML5 compatible (e.g. IE10+, Chrome 10+, Firefox 10+, Safari 5.1+).

[MIE]

We made a particular effort to encourage JK 2014 competitors to draw up their routes on RouteGadget 2, specifically mentioning it on the JK website and even pointing to online help for new users. The results are pretty disappointing:-

Day 4 ....9.1% .....6.3% ...2.8%

The table above shows the percentage of starters who drew up their routes on RG at the 2012, 2013 and 2014 JKs. The decline which started last year has accelerated, so much so that the overall proportion of those using RG has dropped by 47% since 2012.

Any suggestions why?

Let's not forget that the Relay courses for RouteGadget did not get loaded
until Thursday. (This is NOT a critisism just a statement of the fact.)
By Thursday most orienteers will have assumed that there would be no upload
and, contrary to what we would like to believe, most orienteers will not
have read the announcement in the Nopesport thread relating to Pwll Ddu

[buzz]

Routegadget 2 is excellent - I particularly liked the way it organised and presented the JK relay courses - well done to the JK team for taking the trouble to upload all the course variations - it shows off the rather well planned relay gaffling.

Perhaps a campaign is due - if all NopeSporters sing the praises of RG2 and encourage their friends to draw up their routes more often it may reverse the trend.

However route choice does seem to be a bit of endangered species. Can we have some elephant traps for the robots who just run a bearing please?

There are 3 routes to this control and they're all straight

Choosing a 'route' isn't just about deciding which way to go in fact that's a relatively small part of the challenge - its also about choosing which techniques to use, which elements of the map to use, and what to do if things go wrong.

Similarly RouteGadget isn't all about the routes - split times, hesitations and GPS timing all add to the interest even if people take the same routes.

Even without routes, RouteGadget is a great tool for reviewing courses and maps long after the event itself.

[Roomungous]

Does the diversion away from laptop/PC to tablet/smartphone probably have a significant impact?

[Sloop]

Personally, as an active competitor, planner and controller, I regard it as a fundamental duty/obligation to put my race routes onto Routegadget.

This is by far the best way of providing feedback to the planning team, who have very few other ways of getting anything objective. If we want planners to generally improve over time, how else are they going to get a feel for the consequences of their choices ?

It is also by far the best way of analysing your run for your own benefit - usually you see something that you'd missed at the time, even if you felt you were clean.

Outside of major races, I wear my GPS tracker so that my feedback is completely accurate. The two classic JK days were a bit tricky for me, as on a couple of occasions I still can't honestly say where I'd managed to wander. Maybe embarrassment accounts for some people's reticence ?

[MIE]

Does the diversion away from laptop/PC to tablet/smartphone probably have a significant impact?

I believe RG2 has that capability (to use tablet/smartphone technology) but as I
still use a Nokia "brick" I will leave it to those with the relevant hardware
to comment on how easy it is to use.

[DJM]

Roomungous wrote:
Does the diversion away from laptop/PC to tablet/smartphone probably have a significant impact?

JK 2014 website stats for the last month:-

desktop: 62% of sessions
tablet: ..20% of sessions (79% of these were iPads)
mobile: .18% of sessions (44% of these were iPhones)

Interestingly, the percentages for the last six days (just when RG tracks were being drawn) are 71%, 18% and 11% respectively.

[andy]

I thought about this a lot when I found myself not caring about uploading routes myself.

Java issues with the old version are understandable, people got out of the habit. I only had one computer with Java set up properly for applets (because I was uploading ESOCs RG I needed one) but otherwise I have no need for it. Very little web content uses java applets these days.
The HTML5 issue is a non-starter. You're using some seriously old kit if your browser doesn't handle html5. Upgrade your browser to the latest version or get a decent one: Chrome or [img=http://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/]Firefox[/img] will make your browsing faster and way more fun than any version of IE (and even Opera which I find slow and bloated).

It's cumbersome to add routes without gps (and the first time I used RG2 I got an error doing this and haven't bothered to try again). It was a pain to get a gps route accurate originally and I haven't tried again.

The more people don't use it, the less useful it becomes for others so the less they want to use it, it's a snowball effect.

For the person who asked if there was wifi available. Yes there was but it wasn't for internet access or RG, it was just results. It'd be a cost prohibitive exercise for most events to provide a facility to upload routes from the arena. Not to mention the fact someone would have to then merge these into the live site (not an easy task with RG, at least it wasn't a few years ago)

Ultimately I think RG is going out of fashion, with the catalyst being the reasons above. I think it really boils down to the fact that nobody benefits from uploading routes apart from maybe the planners and future organisers, yes you might spot a route that you hadn't considered but, well, you should be able to spot that on looking at the map after the race.
There are better tools for individual analysis, Quickroute and DOMA to name a good combination. If it was really beneficial to the top elites they'd all be uploading routes and they aren't, most of them are using a combination of QR and DOMA for training/training races, for top level competitions they have it ready made with gps tracking.

What I'd really like to see is a good way of accessing courses online, if they are uploaded just after the race it gives people the ability to use them in QuickRoute without having to scan a map and they can be useful in the future. There are bandwidth issues with the image upload approach though, one of the benefits of RG is you can look at all the courses while only having to download the map file once. Perhaps RG2 could be tweaked to allow downloading an image of the course (in fact I've just googled this and looks do-able!)

[Tatty]

I can't get route gadget to work. Would ,love to be able to put my routes on and see what my fellow competitors did