The Jobification of Weather Apps

Or You had one job to do, weather app.

These screens are in Celsius degrees. Or “degrees” as the rest of the world calls them.

Take a look at the above image. Two weather apps. On the left is The Weather Channel app (though it could be any number of other apps which mostly look the same) and on the right is Weathertron. Is one of them better than the other? Go ahead, take your time.

Both apps, and many other like them, are the same in that they take a whole lot of meteorological information, analyze it, and try to convey it to me, the user. And each app makes a choice, or rather a set of choices: What data should it show on the first screen? And on secondary screens? How should the data be visualized? The choices made by the two apps you see above are clearly very different. Is one of them better than the other?

Personally, I think there is a clear winner here. It didn’t take me long to decide I prefer Weathertron, but it took me a while longer to realize why. The answer lies not only in how they look or how accurate they are, but mostly in the context: Every time I open my weather app I do it in a specific context. [edit: fix] I have a question on my mind or, in Jobs-to-be-Done speak, I have a job I am hiring the app for. Looking at my own habits I can say that I usually open my weather app in the morning with this question in mind:

It’s morning, I’m getting dressed. What weather should I be prepared for?

Let’s see what answer I get if I open up Weathertron:

Crap. I won’t dare go out today without an umbrella.

In a single glance I learn that: It’s cloudy now, and will snow in about an hour (the white column) then rain for the rest of the day (the light blue columns.) [Edit: removed “It’s snowing now.”]The temperature is at 1˚ right now, it’ll climb all the way up to 4˚ degrees in a few hours. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to go out. I know what weather I’m dressing for, and if I need accessories like an umbrella, sunglasses or a scarf. I’m good to go.

And if I open The Weather Channel app with the same question in mind?

Curiously enough, these screenshots were taken seconds apart, so I guess they use different meteorological models

Not much. It tells me it’s rainy outside, and the current temperature. So far pretty useful. Then it tells me the highs and lows for the day, which isn’t very helpful without context (when is that low going to happen? In 5 minutes? 5 hours? 15 hours? did it happen 3 hours ago?). Whenever I open my weather app, I want to know the current weather forecast.

Let’s see if we can dig in. If I pull up the screen, I get some more details:

I always love ads with my weather.

But apart from the “feels like” temperature, what else is useful here? Dew Point? Percentage of humidity? I’m not really sure what all this information means.

TWC doesn’t provide an answer to my question. Does it provide an answer to any other question that I might have on my mind? Is it aiming for a different context? Not really. The closest I can get to a context with TWC is

So tell me everything about the weather

Which I suspect isn’t why most people open their weather app. Context makes all the difference, and the makers of Weathertron, even if not familiar with JTBD, have nailed it.

How about other apps. What about Apple’s default weather app, for example?

Again, a few seconds apart, and still the data in Apple’s weather app, which comes from TWC, is different.

You may notice Apple uses TWC data, going back to the point about making choices on what to surface and how. But do they do a better job with the same data? Slightly. The Apple weather app gives me a nice view on the next few hours, but also tries to tell me what’s going on the the next few days, and again shows the highs and lows but doesn’t add context to them. It’s as if they weren’t sure what question users will have on their mind, so they answered a few at the same time:

What’s the weather going to be like in the next few hours?
What’s the weather going to be like in the next few days?
What’s the weather like in other places?

Let’s take that first question, about the next few hours, and try to ask it in a different way:

Weather wise, is it the best idea to go out now?

If Apple were indeed trying to answer this question, then they did a slightly better job than Weathertron, and a much better job than TWC. But they don’t even come close to DarkSky.

Oh, maybe I’m better off going out 30 minutes from now.

DarkSky gives such a detailed picture of the next hour, that many times I find myself consulting it and deciding I better wait for 10 minutes for the rain to calm down before I head outside. Or sometimes it tells me the rain is just going to get stronger, so I better hurry out right now.

DarkSky might not always be accurate (it sometimes warns me of rain starting when they sky is completely clear over my head), but it has saved my ass enough times for that to be forgivable.

One more app I want to mention in this context, Poncho, is unique in a few ways. First, it’s not a mobile app like the others. It’s a service that you can sign up to and configure on the web, and it communicates with you via SMS and/or email.

Cutesy yet useful.

Poncho, as I see it, tries to answer a question a little broader than Weathertron, namely:

I‘m about to leave home for work / leave work for home. What should I be prepared for?

You configure Poncho to know when you usually wake up, when you usually leave work, and how you commute (e.g. what subway line). Poncho, in return, sends you text messages as you wake up and before you leave work, letting you know what weather to expect and notifying you if there are any alerts regarding your commute (is the Q having problems again?)

Poncho can also be configured to update you on relevant information on how the today’s weather can effect your allergies, hair, pets and more, and takes into consideration that you don’t need to commute on weekends and holidays.

The Poncho experience itself is good, though it takes some getting used to. The text messages are handcrafted, which shows and adds a personal touch. Think of it almost as your mom waking you up to school and saying “you better take your umbrella, it’s going to rain in the afternoon.”

So there you have it. Not two apps, but two groups of services. One group realizes that they, in a way, are hired by us, the users, to provide a very specific answer in a very specific context. The other group doesn’t. And that makes all the difference.

Personally, I’d rather have two or even three distinct apps on my phone that answer distinct questions very well (emphasis on “very well”. I’m looking at you Thermo Diem), rather than one app that answers multiple questions, but doesn’t do it half as well. What about you?