The New ITV & BBC Weather Thread

Bill Rogers' gossip site reports that it's launching in around four weeks.

I think it's been asked before but will we be seeing BBC Reith on the new look weather?

Knowing the BBC they'll use Comic Sans or something bizarre like that.

From the blog:

Still the new system is in the hands of Creative Director, Yael Levey; she's created "6 personas" so that the design development serves a range of different needs. The personas are Jenny, Jade, Tim, Tony, Helen and Imran.

Could someone who speaks fluent bull***t translate this for me please?

In design terms, a common technique is to create "personas" basically an amalgam of personalities, lifestyles, world views. The hopes that if you personify various target audiences, it helps to tailor the design/UI/UX to a wider audience.

During the design process you would ask questions like, What would "Jenny" want when she opens the Weather app. or "Imran turns onto Breakfast, to check the weather before leaving for work, what does he need to know"

Doesn't give you much faith in MeteoGroups' forecasts when they think Spring is in September.

Surprised they haven't revived Dave and Sue.

Presumably they all want to know what the weather is going to be.

I guess one of these personas is a farmer who needs a Countryfile style forecast, one is a sailor who needs the shipping forget, one is quite knowledgeable about the weather and gets annoyed when the forecast is dumbed down and doesn't show the pressure chart, one barely knows their East from their West. One might have an accessibility requirement. One of them is totally bewildered by how the hourly forecast on the website often contradicts the map below it.

The idea is to make sure that what they are producing works for this diverse range of "consumers".

When designing anything that needs to convey a message it's critical to understand who your audience is. "Just tell them the weather" isn't very helpful. How does your nan want to consume the content? How does her grandson? What makes BBC weather unique and distinctive across the platforms?

They need to determine the design approaches that are both clear and engaging across an audience base that has a hugely diverse age range / digital literacy / understanding of meteorological concepts / love of TV presentation

Creating 'personas' allows them to define a set of characteristics that they will design against.

Weather is complex. People are complex. The methods of delivering the content is complex. Designing information systems that work for everyone is incredibly difficult, good design doesn't come from thin air and it certainly doesn't come from a brief consisting of "just tell me the weather mate".

This is not Perfect Curve, it's design 101

When did the BBC World weather forecasts start including city images? For the west coast of the US was San Francisco of the painted ladies and for the east coast was of New York from top of the rock.

Edit : Was just looking at my Tivo'd recordings and they weren't there.

It's called knowing your audience and designing for them. It's a perfectly normal and valid technique. It's used in TV production and all sorts of other areas of content creation (advertising in particular)

Each 'persona' has different requirements, and the personas are there to ensure that the team designing and changing things consider the impact on a range of users. It's there to avoid people designing a look, or a system, or UX or a programme, that meets their own personal needs very well, and those of others less so.