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Comment by vngzs | Hacker News Reader

To find it, you need to know that tapping on the hourly weather view gives you the temperature graph. Then you need to click the thermostat icon and switch it to precipitation. Only then is the information displayed. Once it's onscreen, the precipitation graph in the Apple Weather app centers on the full day view (with the current time in the middle) rather than just the future, which is what most users care about.

That's not the same as putting it front-and-center. Yes, the information is there, but the interface design is garbage.

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If rain is forecast in the next hour they put the minute by minute graph at the top front and center in the iOS weather app.

Not good enough. I'm going to be out for the whole day: do I need an umbrella? I want to know that immediately. It's such basic information that it needs to be always at hand.

The app also tells you that. For example at the top of the app now I see a message “Rainy conditions expected around 3pm”

Author here!

There's definitely a taste / opinion component to any deep design critique. I think for many (for whom the post resonated), the ability to quickly glance at Dark Sky and understand relevant weather contextually was THE game changer.

It's a hard thing to discuss, because until you've felt the experience, it doesn't seem like a "big deal".

Some apps do use text to talk about the current / upcoming rain, but showing it visually makes it even easier. The ease of use is important because weather apps aren't meant to be that interactive (like a game). They're meant to be context-sensitive information graphics that let you drop in and out very very quickly.

http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#inferring_context_from_the_e...

Thank you for taking the time to write this article. I was disturbed about the shutdown of Darksky because I really loved the features of that app and reading your article took me on a nice walk down memory lane. Raising the discussion here has been not only been cathartic in that I now know I have a lot of company for my thoughts, but has also provided some alternatives to try to recapture the experience. I'm not a big fan of Apple Weather and at least now I have some options to explore.

As the author points out, text like that is inferior to embedding information in the graphic. The reason is that with text, I have to just "hope" that they've handled all the cases that I care about, and at the fidelity that is relevant to me. With a graphic, this information is always available, and combining multiple elements tells me more information than a single text snippet can. For example: "Oh, it's only going to be drizzly for like an hour, I'll be in a meeting around then anyways." That's a decision that 'rainy conditions expected around 3pm' does not help me with.

> As the author points out, text like that is inferior to embedding information in the graphic.

Apple Weather presents this information in graphical form as well. When I open the app, not only is what I need to know — "Rainy conditions expected around 7pm" — front and center, but just below that I can scroll through hours with rain percentages, and with another tap I can get as much detail as I could want.

> To find it, you need to know that tapping on the hourly weather view gives you the temperature graph.

To find it, you need to know that the interface is interactive the same way as other interfaces like control center are - clicking a 'tile' pops/navigates to more details.

You don't have to tap on temperature - tapping on the precipitation forecast will drill down to precipitation estimates.

Just know that Apple Weather (like Dark Sky before it) uses multiple different models, so the forecasts 15 minutes, 2 hours, and 1 day out are likely to be reasoned about entirely differently.

And even then, it's often plain wrong. A couple of weeks ago it was raining in my area at noon (a flood watch was active!) but the precipitation screen showed 0 rain that day, in the past and the future.

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