Aoreli
A minimalistic humane approach to weather apps.
A week-long design sprint to redesign the experience with forecast applications for a simple, immersive experience.
Timeline
1 week
Project Context
Design Sprint
Tools
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Figma
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Notion
Type of Work
Ideation
Experience Strategy
Research
Interaction & Visual Design.
ABOUT AORELI
What about this app?
A solution that brings out the important bits of weather, helping you to understand and make your day better.
THE CHALLENGE
Rapidly design a seamless experience for weather applications innovating on features for accessibility.
THE SOLUTION
An information focused, color-driven approach to weather app, presenting key information with a humane design.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
It started with…
me discovering the clutter and TMIs in weather applications today, which jittered my daily experience with the apps.
As I thought about it
There is a great deal of emphasis on time, numbers, and information in today’s world. For all users, weather applications have a significant impact and a variety of use cases. It provides crucial planning assistance for daily activities and warns about potential transportation and health risks. Additionally, it gathers data for numerous analyses and broadens its influence to include outdoor and sporting events.
I wanted to address
The friction of information-loaded experiences today, and how simplifying and minimalism can bring out the important bits and provide a better experience to the users.
By creating
An engaging, seamless solution encompassing the importance of weather information, forecast and assessments, which integrates concepts of visual and humane design to bring a fresh experience.
About what led to building this project
PROCESS
How I structured and approached this project.
1
Exploration
I began by learning about the key concepts of weather applications, the human factors and user behaviours attached with it. Furthermore, researching on the apps in the market and their architecture.
4
Creation
I finally got down to brainstorming and running wild into creation and bringing all the ideas to life, building with validation and iterating with each insight.
2
Ideation
I explored on the individual blocks and the human principles we know about, integrating these concepts into an experience, to find the arcs to innovate on tweak the experience for the better.
5
and, Validation
Wrapping up the design, I proceeded with testing it out with the users and learn from the insights.
3
Conception
I understand the time constraint and that branching out to multiple concepts can be costly, so I needed to focus my findings into opportunities and actionable goals and prioritize them.
The design process throughout the week has been structured with two days for research and defining the problem, a day each for ideating and deciding on the necessary strategy and solution, and the following days till the end of the week would be devoted to designing and continuous evaluations, testing and iteration on the design.
EXPLORATION
What defines the weather experience?
The key thing I wanted to find out with this phase was to understand the fundamental components that build the experience with the application, and what changes affect this experience.
I started with some questions.
What defines a complete weather application?
What are the components users interact with, are curious about, are habituated to and the blocks that define the app experience?
What knowledge can I use to enhance these components further?
Why are these blocks important? what purpose do they serve? What concepts are they working on and how can we play with these concepts?
Here is what i found.
About the Apps
Weather applications are fundamentally information-centric and clear. It greatly depends on the layout and structure it follows to build and present the information architecture. This gives creative designers a good amount of screen space to develop and find solutions that balance design and function.
I heuristically tested and evaluated multiple stock and third-party applications understanding their offerings, shortcoming and design.
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VISUAL HIERARCHY is strikingly similar and rightly so, with the main focus being the temperature, following up with the information related to the weather of the week and additional information.
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INFORMATION BOMB with endless streams of details regarding every aspect of the weather and columns of data on specific features.
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VISUAL PLAY with animations and visual indicators to build an immersive experience which usually does not complement well with their design and fails to serve its purpose.
About the Users
I spent the next day understanding the users and their way around the application, what drives them to use it and what are their needs, the little hiccups and what could the application do better, through a session of interviews.
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Most users would glance over the application than go through it.
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They wanted an accurate foresight for the day.
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Many users suggested a need for personalized weather suggestions and alert notifications.
About the research behind Aoreli
IDEATION
Before putting the finishing touches on the research insights and moving on with concepts and knowledge, I needed to have some fundamental questions and the answers to those questions in order to determine the project's objectives.
What Aoreli will be?
A solution geared towards people and businesses to help them get accurate and instant weather information, personalized and clear in its message.
What Aoreli will offer?
Users the ability to find key weather information, personalized suggestions and all forecast information, in an instant.
A look at how I thought things through
Synthesizing from the user and product research, I started with picking out the individual blocks that build a weather forecasting application and how to innovate on each block. Since most users strictly pointed out the need for a clear and intuitive presentation, I conducted some secondary research on the same and was introduced to research regarding human attention time, colour psychology and minimalism.
The Human Attention Time
Designers were challenged to create an application that allows a user to navigate through all key functions in a reasonable amount of time. According to recorded research and Steven Zouderer's article, the human attention span is only 8.25 seconds. A mere 8-second window for designers to play and create a hook with its users.
Why Minimal?
Minimalism does not simply direct itself to mean less or minimum but is complete with the necessary. An information-focused and presentation depended on application such as a weather application could integrate minimalism into its design to provide a clean and clear structure, and also help provide key information upfront and without clutter.
The Color Approach
A color approach in this regard was to assist the 8 second window. Weather has always been determined by the sky, and with every change in shade, the weather changes as well. Using a similar logic in the design, a colour-based design with gradients representing different weather conditions would help users instantly understand about the weather and outlook of the day without much effort.
Picking out the Atoms
A weather app can be broken down and sketched out in 3 blocks
CONCEPTION
How do we build something with impact?
This was on top of my mind while prioritizing and focusing on all the data from the research to UX.
From the research and brainstorming ideas to uplift the design for each block. I noted some design options that would help me creatively solve each issue.
Aoreli should be colorful.
Introducing a colour-based approach to design which represents each weather condition, aimed to allow users to get a gist of the weather even before going through the information.
Aoreli must be Clean, Correct and Concise.
Each presentable item should be informative and well thought out.
From the flow of information with attention to visual hierarchy and interplay of all modules, must adhere to the 3 C’s.
Aoreli is personal.
Short one-liners speaking about the day, and suggestions in regard to the weather. The solution should communicate, inform, notify and provide assistance for any forecast needs related to weather.
CREATION
The biggest challenge included
Stripping every information down. It was to find the perfect balance between the right information, the needful data and the nice to haves, and blending everything with design.
So, here is how i got things done
STAGE 1 OF 3
Creating layouts, integrating features and finalizing architecture⚒️
I created a feature list and a few design layouts to get feedback on different user flows. Then finalized the layout and flow and built the design elements for the brand identity.
STAGE 2 OF 3
Finding the right colours🦄
The next step was to reflect the weather with colours, after multiple feedbacks on the swatches, I finalized the colours for different weather from sun, rain, thunderstorm, snow, sandstorm and night sky.
STAGE 3 OF 3
Solving problems, getting feedback and creating magic🪄
It was now time to build the solution, adding the learnings from each step of the process and implementing the decisions. It is definitely the phase with the most joy when ideas come to life.
VALIDATION
But, did I do it right?
It was important for me to understand if the steps and my thoughts about the solution reflected well with the users.
Asking the users
I tested and gathered insights about the application design from the people I interviewed and more. Primarily I wanted to note on the experience Aoreli provided and if the user gravitated more towards the product's approach to present information.
Here is what i learned
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Most respondents acknowledged the cleaner experience and ease of using the application.
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The integration of smart suggestions and virtual assistants had a positive light on the users. It received a lot of interaction.
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Overall on average, the application details could be navigated through within 18 seconds, in which the information on the home screen could be inferred in less than 8 seconds.
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There were some respondents, who were vocal about their need for more details in regard to UV, and AQI, to provide a much more detailed overview and forecast with time and date stamps.
SOLUTION
And finally, say hi to
Aoreli
A look at how Aoreli’s Clean, Correct, Concise take on weather application leads to more natural, humane and simpler interactions.
The sky is clear, why not your weather app?
Colours can tell.
Simple and complete.
Personal is powerful.
And so much more
See the prototype in full action
TAKEAWAYS
So, what about now?
The application has a few more stones to turn. For the future steps:
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I’d love to find more research and design inspirations that would make the application more seamless.
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Working on the one-liners and suggestions to provide a more personalized forecast based on the user’s liking for different seasons, activities and daily habits.
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The assistant feature can also be developed to provide a more natural and personal response to user queries.
The sprint was livelier and more interesting than I had anticipated. It helped me not only better structure my design process and dive into the practicality of the knowledge, but also better voice my design decisions and rapidly turn ideas into usable prototypes.
That's all about the weather today!
Thanks for checking this out.
