I’ve been a long-time supporter of Zwift, and have personally convinced at least three friends to buy smart trainers and start riding online. Have been on the platform for three years in February. After having watched the UCI worlds today and seeing how much time they must have spent designing national jerseys and cleaning up the race reporting UI, am I the only one who is a little irked that they couldn’t even do a new Jersey for this year’s ToNY?
To spend all those design/programming resources on two races that made a great experience for what, say 90 pro and semi-pro riders and a bunch of people watching, and then next to none on an event that every rider on Zwift (many who’ve been on the platform for years) can participate in is just so disappointing, and it isn’t the first time. You know that these annual events are coming up. Is it so hard to designate one designer to create a unique jersey each year? Even if it just modifies our existing Jerseys from prior years with bands or something to say how many years we’ve completed (that would actually take programming instead of design, tho’).For those of us for whom jerseys, etc. are a particular type of motivation, knowing that the kit is the same doesn’t create the same compulsion to ride that a new one would.
Can someone from Zwift please just give us a roadmap so we can know whether to stick with this platform or no? I love Zwift. I know that different people use it in different ways, and that you can’t please everyone all of the time. But can you please cycle through the different constituencies over the course of year instead of just servicing new ones/pro racing? People have been waiting for the anti-sandbagging rollout for MORE THAN A YEAR. Others have been waiting for you to roll clubs out to everyone. Some of us would just like unique jerseys for these annual events, which honestly, seems like the easiest thing in the world to do.
I feel as if you’re focused on growing the platform at the expense of long-time customers. You’ve taken a bunch of VC money and don’t seem to be doing the bare minimum for your current customer base at the expense of creating races for a few people so others can watch online?
First rowing was coming, then, because you polled, uh…cyclists, you decided there wasn’t demand for rowing. [hey, how about polling rowers?] You telegraphed all of my above mentioned changes that haven’t happened (including a new UI), and seem to be taking forever to roll them out (if at all). I know that usage grew during covid, presenting you with scaling issues, but surely not everyone in the organization had to work on that?
I just wish I knew why Eric was so cagey in his responses on the Zwiftcast. It should be a no-brainer to publish something annually (like, on a permanent webpage) saying “This is what we want to roll out this year/Here’s our development roadmap”, and then revisiting it quarterly or semi-annually to see if you’re still on track or if you have abandoned/revised it (and why, if possible). Just a little better communication/transparency would go so far with your user-base. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be mad if I hated all the things you had planned for the next year, if you’d just tell us what they are.
Anyway, I know this isn’t new feedback, and I’m not one who’s ever been critical of Zwift - I love the platform. I’m just feeling more and more disheartened that things that should be simple and/or high impact are being overlooked to try to tap into a completely different userbase. I own a software company, so I’m not oblivious to the demands of development, but holy smokes I don’t understand some of your decisions.
[Note, I half expect to be slammed for this, but this is in the feedback category - I just want to fall in love with Zwift all over again!]
