It’s confirmed—Garmin is out the game
24 May 2015
A couple of days ago, I wrote about Garmin losing their way in UI/UX design. Then yesterday, I tweeted a feature request feature request to them.
Garmin is one of those companies whose tweets all end with a weird sort of abbreviated signature of the person tweeting—“^AJ” from Bank of America, or in this case, “*CG” from Garmin. I’ve always wondered whether these companies are all outsourcing their social media to the same provider, or are all using the same “hook-up-Twitter-to-your-customer-support” platform.
Either way, a common characteristic of these companies is that you’ll never get anything done through Twitter, and that was the case here. “CG”, rather than passing on the feature suggestion, pointed me to a web form where I can “submit my ideas to their engineers”. (I might have an idea now why design has suffered at Garmin…)
The suggestion form at Garmin asks me to categorize my idea, and, get ready for it, here are the options:
As a consumer, I’m asked to pick whether my idea relates to “On the Road”, “Into Sports” or “On the Go”? Seriously, what’s the difference between those? And do they expect a consumer to even know what “OEM” means?
I find myself wondering whether it even matters which category I pick. With choices like these, surely it can’t. And if it doesn’t, why show me this in the first place?
After submitting your idea, Garmin are diligent about making it abundantly clear that (a) you’re not going to hear back from them, and (b) don’t try following up.
Good job, Garmin. You’ve officially lost it.
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