{"id":1337,"date":"2019-12-13T20:15:41","date_gmt":"2019-12-14T03:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/?p=1337"},"modified":"2019-12-13T20:15:47","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T03:15:47","slug":"a-non-professional-critique-of-the-weather-underground-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/2019\/12\/a-non-professional-critique-of-the-weather-underground-app\/","title":{"rendered":"A non-professional critique of the Weather Underground app"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not a UX expert, but I have opinions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Weather Underground is one of my most-used apps. It gathers data from thousands of neighborhood weather stations run by individuals. Here&#8217;s the new front page:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0825-576x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1338\" width=\"520\" height=\"924\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0825-576x1024.png 576w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0825-169x300.png 169w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0825-768x1365.png 768w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0825-864x1536.png 864w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0825-1152x2048.png 1152w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0825.png 1242w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/><figcaption>Weather Underground front page, above the fold<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first thing you might notice is the large circular dial. That&#8217;s taking up a LOT of real estate here, and it doesn&#8217;t add a lot given that the temperature is already listed. (It took me a bit to realize this was temp, and not a compass direction). The app used to show relative weather (&#8220;Today will be cooler than yesterday&#8221;) which I really miss. Likewise with hourly specifics, like (&#8216;Rain will begin around 2:00&#8217;) rather than just a percentage spread out over some unspecified amount of time. I just want to know if I need to grab an umbrella or not, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And what&#8217;s going on with the little wind dial? Is it pointing northwest or southeast? And I have no idea what that &#8212; underneath &#8220;Winds&#8221; is supposed to show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Wundermap is nice, but I wish I had more control over what appears above the fold&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s scroll past the huge tracts of ads. (not faulting anyone for this&#8211;gotta pay the bills)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"576\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0827-576x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1339\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0827-576x1024.png 576w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0827-169x300.png 169w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0827-768x1365.png 768w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0827-864x1536.png 864w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0827-1152x2048.png 1152w, https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_0827.png 1242w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Are my eyes playing a trick on me, or are the &#8220;daylight&#8221; sections of this top readout darker than the nighttime ones? Nights are the dark times, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The other thing that keeps tripping me up on this page is that there is no indication of where &#8220;now&#8221; is. It looks like it will start raining in the evening, but I can&#8217;t get a sense of how imminent that might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The red line looks like temperature, but what those unevenly-spaced hollow dots represent, I haven&#8217;t the slightest idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The hourly section came up exactly like this on a fresh launch of the app. Admittedly, forecasting the past is easier, but still I with it was scrolled to the point where I could see what&#8217;s upcoming. Maybe some indication of &#8220;now&#8221; here would also help orient viewers, and link the hourly forecast to the daily one above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, the devs are always tweaking things, so I hope they&#8217;ll run across this and take it into account in their designs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Signed, a fan -m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not a UX expert, but I have opinions. Weather Underground is one of my most-used apps. It gathers data from thousands of neighborhood weather stations run by individuals. Here&#8217;s the new front page: The first thing you might notice is the large circular dial. That&#8217;s taking up a LOT of real estate here, and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[1175,769,1078,1241],"class_list":["post-1337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","tag-review","tag-usability","tag-ux","tag-weather"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8eo8l-lz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1340,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions\/1340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}