Weather App
A familiar utility app reimagined.
Service
UI/UX, Product Design
Course
Advanced Interactive
Year
2018
Project Overview
The purpose of this project was to become familiar with the product design process. The assignment was to reimagine the weather app. We were instructed to build our app around three predetermined tasks, create wireframes, prototype, user test, apply changes according to findings, then user test again.
The Process
I began my process by mapping out how I wanted users to complete the three tasks:
1
2
3
Open Weather App and accept “use your current location,” then check current location’s weather for 8 pm
Add locations: mobile, AL; Boston, MA; New York, NY then check New York’s current weather
Check weather in NY for next Wednesday, check emergency alert, read alert
I sketched out wireframes of my main screens, i then created my first prototype in Adobe XD, found three users to test it, built a second prototype based on my findings and tested it again with three additional users.
User Testing Round 1
USER 1
TASK 1 | 00:56
TASK 2 | 00:32
TASK 3 | 00:22
USER 2
USER 3
TASK 1 | 01:52
TASK 1 | 01:55
TASK 2 | 00:38
TASK 2 | 01:04
TASK 3 | 00:53
TASK 3 | 03:02
User Testing Round 2
USER 4
TASK 1 | 00:14
TASK 2 | 00:19
TASK 3 | 00:20
USER 5
USER 6
TASK 1 | 00:20
TASK 1 | 00:12
TASK 2 | 00:25
TASK 2 | 00:20
TASK 3 | 00:17
TASK 3 | 00:19
The Results
My first round of users really struggled with the first task. They wanted to swipe left and right, but that feature was not available in XD. Also, my file was too large, so they experienced a lot of delays. After learning these issues, I cleaned up the design by making the hierarchy stronger, including more whitespace, and switching from XD to Justinmind which had more interactive abilities that allowed the user experience to feel more natural.
Before
After
Learnings
1
User-testing is extremely valuable in exposing problems. It's easy to to get distracted on your own so it's nice to get multiple perspectives to help you focus more.
2
Cleaner is clearer. Adding more white space and a stronger hierarchy made completing tasks much easier.
3
It's worth taking time to learn new prototyping tools and techniques to create a more intuitive design.
Credits:
Professor:
Wei Wang
Design Student:
Sterling Waits
