ShoosOn Built with runners, not just for them
ShoosOn is made by runners who love technology, with a community board that turns practical runner feedback into a better, more respectful app.
ShoosOn is developed by runners who love technology and want to make the best running app we possibly can.
That means more than adding clever features. It means building an app that respects runners: their time, their attention, their changing weeks and the fact that motivation does not look the same for everyone.
We use the app ourselves, but our experience is not every runner’s experience. The only honest way to build something useful for a wider running community is to listen to that community.
The people using ShoosOn are not at the end of the product process. They are part of it.
A board for ideas, votes and visible progress
The ShoosOn community board gives runners a direct place to suggest improvements and vote for the ideas that would make the biggest difference to them. Active ideas stay visible while they are being considered or built. Shipped ideas move to the Wall of Wins, where the original request, community support and development response remain visible.
The real ShoosOn community screen running in the iPhone Simulator. The entries and vote totals are synthetic for this preview; the features shown are implemented in the app.
Voting matters because one suggestion can describe a personal preference, while a pattern of votes can reveal a shared point of friction. The board helps us distinguish between the two without making the loudest individual voice the only one heard.
It also creates accountability. An idea should not disappear into a support inbox. Runners should be able to see whether it is open, planned, active or shipped.
“Nudge me, don’t annoy me”
Notification design is a good example of community feedback improving the shape of ShoosOn.
A reminder can be useful when it arrives on a planned run day. The same reminder becomes irritating when the runner has already trained, moved the session or deliberately skipped it. So the requirement was not simply “add notifications.” It was nudge, do not annoy.
That principle now runs through the implementation. Runners control their reminder preferences, and plan-aware quiet rules prevent a skipped, moved or completed session from generating the wrong prompt. It is a small distinction technically and a large distinction emotionally: support should not become guilt delivered by push notification.
Features shaped by runner feedback
The same practical feedback has influenced features across the app:
- Move and swap runs: because a training week has to survive work, family, weather and tired legs.
- Landmark milestones: because lifetime distance means more when kilometres become a journey through real places.
- Workout explanations: because adaptive coaching should explain why a session belongs in the week.
- Custom warm-ups and cool-downs: because sensible guidance should still leave room for personal routines.
- Food equivalents: because a playful, human comparison can be more enjoyable than another abstract calorie number.
- Notification controls: because runners should decide which messages help and which ones stay quiet.
Some ideas begin as feature requests. Others arrive as bug reports, awkward moments or a sentence such as “I wish this would just…” All of them are useful evidence about how the app behaves outside a development environment.
Respect is a product feature
We want ShoosOn to help runners keep going, not make them feel managed by software.
Respecting runners means making controls understandable, protecting their attention, explaining automated decisions and allowing a plan to bend when life does. It also means being willing to change something we built when runners tell us it does not work well enough.
While we cant promise to implement every suggestion exactly as submitted, ideas can conflict, introduce safety concerns or solve a narrow problem at the expense of everyone else. But every thoughtful suggestion deserves consideration, and the reasoning should be visible wherever possible.
Help shape what comes next
Community feedback is very much welcomed. Tell us what saves time, what creates friction, what feels motivating and what feels intrusive. Vote when another runner has already described the need well. Suggest something new when they have not.
ShoosOn is built by runners who love tech. It becomes a better running app when more runners help shape it.