The complete redesign of the most popular weather service in the U.K.
What did I do? Research, design and strategy.
How we made it
The setup
The BBC had been using the Met Office for weather data since its founding.
They had just commissioned a new supplier for the first time in its history.
Moving away from the Met Office was causing bad press and complaints from the public.
Within the BBC there was fear of media and public response.
The challenge
Create a cross platform experience for web, app and TV that showed obvious improvements to the service. And don’t cause bad headlines.
Researching user behaviour
Early in the project we interviewed users to see how they used the current weather products and commissioned diary studies to better understand our users.
Cross platform vision
We collaborated with broadcast designers and weather presenters to create a consistent experience across all BBC surfaces.
Product vision
We carried out planning activities to help work out where we should focus our energy and why. Working out short term goals and long term vision.
Getting buy-in
The BBC is a large organisation, and to get buy-in we needed to make sure people from multiple parts of the org understood what we were doing and had the opportunity to give input.
Design. Test.
Iterate. Repeat.
Making sure our designs allowed users to read the weather easily and and then make educated decisions from these forecasts took multiple rounds of user testing and design.
Document findings for future team members
This ranged from high level personas to well detailed confluence pages that explained our understanding of how people read the weather and how to design for success in the future.
Core design principles
There was a lot of logic behind the scenes, so we wanted to make sure the context behind the designs weren’t lost.
Designing for accessibility
We had to ensure our designs didn’t disable any of our users.
We designed with accessibility in mind, championed accessible tasks in sprint planning and worked flexibly with developers to ensure it was accessible to everyone.
Conclusion
We launched successfully without taking a hit to usage figures - despite customers loyalty to the Met Office.
There weren’t negative headlines and five years later, the website and broadcast designs are still being used without the need for any changes.
