Join a Zwifter - Feature Plans [September 2022]

Hi everyone! My name is Alex, and I’m on the Product team at Zwift.

We’re actively working to bring back the Join a Zwifter feature to the new home screen, and I’d love your feedback on our direction.

Current Plan
Our primary focus right now is to bring this feature back as quickly as possible, though we are planning to work in small tweaks to improve the feature based on community feedback. At the highest level, our planned first pass is:

  • Add a “Join a Zwifter” card to the “Just Ride” carousel on the home screen
  • Display a list of pros, verified accounts, and Zwifters you follow who are riding now.
  • Let you join a Zwifter from the list.

Planned changes vs the old functionality
These are the changes we’re hoping to make with launch. Our priority is bringing this feature back, so we may not make all of the changes by the time this is live.

  • List Zwifters regardless of world.
  • Display elapsed time, which is the amount of time the Zwifter has been riding. The list will be sorted by elapsed time.
  • Only Pros, Verified Accounts, and Zwifters you follow will be listed, as opposed to the additional list of random Zwifters the old home screen shows.
  • Only list users you can actually join. The old functionality lists Zwifters in events, meaning you can’t actually join them.
  • Display the Zwifter’s country.

We’d love your feedback
What do you like or dislike about this direction? What do you want to make sure we’re considering as this is built out?

Thanks!

-Alex

17 Likes

It would be helpful to highlight Zwifters I follow who are favorites. When people follow many riders (some approaching 5000!) they might have a smaller list of favorites that they’re more likely to ride with. Find a way to surface those.

19 Likes

I would like to see the list reversed. 1st Favorited Zwifters I follow 2nd Zwifters I follow then Pros and Verified accounts.

When looking for someone to ride with we think of our closest friends first.

33 Likes

Ideally it should be customisable (and remember your choice), but that goes for a lot of things about the home screen at present.

12 Likes

I’d agree with this. Would also like to have some indication of where they’re riding…I’ve gone to join a friend before to only be dumped 1/2 way up The Alpe.

14 Likes

I have no interest in pro’s and verified. Let me select who shows up.

9 Likes

Maybe the riders profile picture could be useful to have in front of the name for better visual identification/accessability?

1 Like

As such the list looks awfully airy, a single line with name, flag and rider type as icons and elapsed time would be a more efficient. But adding the profile picture would indeed at least make some better use of all that space.

2 Likes

But isn’t that where you hit the U-turn to score some free XP…

3 Likes

Agree @Anna_Ronkainen. Each line is packed with info at the left side. That white space could be used to make the rider name bigger/easier to read. It is the most important info in that dialog.

1 Like

Why is Just Ride hidden right down at the bottom anyway? Surely an oxymoron.

4 Likes

please, @Alex_Zwift, allow us to customize the order on the home screen

2 Likes

[quote=“Anna Ronkainen [AEO], post:10, topic:590338, username:Anna_Ronkainen”]
isn’t that where you hit the U-turn to score some free XP…
[/quote]

No, that’s where you take a ~30 min break and come back to join when they are at the top of the alpe :slight_smile:

Definitely where they’re riding, I’d select people based on that criteria for sure.

6 Likes

You would want a tick box to pick who gets displayed, pro’s, friends etc otherwise it could be a cumbersome list to navigate.

Are pro’s onboard with this? Kills their privacy.

2 Likes

My guess (which might be incorrect) is that most, if not all, pros get a free Zwift subscription, and that part of the agreement is 'you must show in the ‘Ride With’ list if you are online. At the same time, though, I wonder if many of the pros we see now might ‘disappear’ under the new parameters, as my guess would be that they are often in an ‘event’ of some sort (like a Meet Up or a Workout).

1 Like

I don’t want to know about Pros or Verified riders, just only the riders I’m friends with.

Show the others as optional (deselected by default).

The course someone is riding on (and their current speed) is important to know also.

1 Like

I’ve personally never used “Ride With” so I’m not the correct person to ask about this, but I would imagine Zwift has the telemetry to know whether or not people tend to select a pro vs. someone on their friends list more often. I would suspect it’s someone on their friends list, but I don’t have that data. If the data shows it’s most likely someone on their friends list I would suggest putting those folks (and of course favorited friends) first.

Personally - I don’t think I would jump in with a random pro, if I had any friends that Zwifted I think I would be much more inclined to jump in with them.

I “think” it would be somewhat interesting to know what world and route the friend is on if there was room to put that info in the list, and if the person happens to be riding with a pace partner it would also be interesting to know which pace partner.

3 Likes

Additionally, this list should be sorted by how far away people are from you in the Zwift world. Closest shows first.