Field notes
Finished the workout, or the video played in another room
Event names lie with a straight face. workout_complete in one export meant the closing credits of a video had played. In another it meant the person had tapped a checkmark after a stretch they may or may not have done. In a third it fired when the phone unlocked, because a background timer had run out in a bag on a Grab ride.
For a home workout library, the useful distinction is crude and honest: did the person start the set, and did they mark the cool-down. Minutes streamed are a lighting bill. They are not a finished session.
Outdoor runs scheduled by an app that lives in a temperate brochure collide with Selangor in the afternoon. A 2 p.m. “daily run” that nobody starts is not a motivation problem. It is a plan that ignores heat. We have seen better return when the same app offered a covered-walk substitution and stopped calling the missed outdoor run a broken streak.
Equipment is the other quiet drop. A sequence that assumes a bench and a pair of dumbbells will lose people in a small KL condominium at the second movement. If the first-run never asked what the room contains, the unfinished-workout pile in week two is not mysterious.
When we take a movement brief, we sit the first session on a yoga mat in the studio with nothing else in the room. If the app cannot finish without extras, the review says so on page one, before any cohort chart.