The Weather Buddies is a conceptual app focused on a more social and interactive experience between people and their weather.
The Weather Buddies allows the user to create a more meaningful connection with others through a system that goes further than just selecting locations. The user is able to add "buddies" and receive in-app direct messaging and fully customizable alerts from the people who matter most.
Find your buddies on your dashboard and get a glance of their weather alerts, or simply click on their profile avatar to get a closer look at their weather conditions. Lastly, message them directly from their profile. Take the experience one step further by using the Weather Buddies' messaging features. Send photos, share your weather, add stickers, or share contacts all available in the same place.
With the Weather Buddies, you can personalize everything straight from your dashboard feed or get even more out of the features of the app through the settings menu. Add your favorite outdoor interests, select weather conditions for them, and set alerts and notifications for when the day is ideal for all your favorite activities!
Personalizing your interests also allows you to send in-app message invitations for buddies to tag along on your favorite activities.
This shows an example of what the dashboard would look like if the pre-set conditions for an activity were met ("Running" seen in green next to forecast). You can get a glance of the specific pre-sets and the buddies included in said activity by clicking on the active icon.
Any buddies included in an activity will get the same notifications when conditions are met.
The Research
The Weather Buddies was created based on two questions: Where do you get your weather from? And What conditions are important to share?
We conducted a small poll to better understand our audience, and we concluded that about 66% of people get their weather information from phone applications followed by a 19% of people who get their information from t.v. broadcasting.
We also had a few fill-in blank explanation boxes regarding what they wished was different about the way they received information in which most app users confessed they actually had trouble with the consistency and the types of alerts they received from their app if any at all.
*Other category included those who looked up their weather online, through Doppler radar imaging, and the few who alternated between methods due to the confusion they faced with weather uncertainty due to their app's quality and amount of alerts.
Our next question had to do with the information people actually cared about and cared to share when it came to weather. We discovered that most people cared for rain/stormy weather for reasons based on their attire, their commute, their own safety, and their friends and family's safety.
This also gave us the chance to explore a new weather app system in which the Weather Buddies would only alert you of things you actually wanted to know about, whether that is humidity, allergens, or rain, all alerts would be customizable and able to be turned off at any time.
As a team, we wanted the Weather Buddies to be as customizable as possible in a way that also increased communication amongst its users through shared interests and weather specs.