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| Weather Network 7-day forecast |
At the top of the page are the current conditions. That part's good - that's exactly the information I'm looking for.
However, the next thing I'm looking for is the short-range forecast, which isn't there. There are two small boxes below the current conditions giving a brief summary of the next two 12-hour periods (labelled "Tonight" and "Tuesday" in this screenshot), but that isn't sufficient information. At a minimum, I'm also looking for humidex/windchill (labelled as "Feels like" in these screenshots) and probability of precipitation (labelled "POP" in these screenshots), but they don't have that information on the default page for the short-range forecast. They just have those stingy, inadequate summary boxes with way too wordy a description and way too little quantitative information.
I do want to see the long-range forecast on the main page as well, and it's right there in a format that makes me happy, just below the row of news videos. But without a proper short-range forecast, there's a gap in the information provided.
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| Weather Network 36-hour forecast |
However, the current conditions at the top are incomplete. They have the sky condition with the temperature and humidex, but that's it. No wind speed, humidity, air quality, UV, etc.
This is a problem, because now I have to have two tabs open to get all the information I want, especially when I have weather-sensitive outdoor plans, or in shoulder seasons where I have to make multiple decisions throughout the day about heating/air conditioning, windows open/closed, blinds open/closed to keep my home comfortable.
For example, I'm currently trying to find a good time to wash my windows. To do this, I need to know the current temperature, humidex, wind, humidity and sunset time, all of which are in the current conditions on the main 7-day page, but not all of which are on the 36-hour page. I also need the temperature, POP, and wind for the next couple of days, all of which are on the 36-hour page but not the main 7-day page. So what was a simple at-a-glance task with the Weather Network's old design now requires two tabs.
The best thing the Weather Network could do to fix this is remove the two small boxes ("Tonight" and "Tuesday" in the 7-day screenshot) from the 7-day page, and remove the row of news videos. Then they should put the 36-hour chart from the 36-hour page in their place. This would give us the same at-a-glance skimmability we had on the old website.
If it really is important to separate 7-day and 36-day, the second most useful thing the Weather Network could do is put full current conditions on the 36-day page. This would provide a single-page at-a-glance of the information that updates most frequently throughout the day, and whose updates are most immediately relevant. (In other words, if the overnight forecast changes, that becomes relevant to me far earlier than if the forecast four days from now changes.)
If they really, really, really can't do either of those things, one very simple thing they definitely can do is put humidex/windchill information in those two inadequate short-term boxes on the 7-day page ("Tonight" and "Tuesday" in the screenshot.) They have the information, it appears in every other place in the forecast that mentions temperature, and there's room in the boxes. I have no clue why they chose to omit it in that one very specific location, but that would be easily remedied.
And if they want a bold, innovative option, they could let users customize their own homepage, with the forecasts and data of their choice. This would have the additional benefit (from the Weather Network's point of view) of incentivizing users to create accounts and stay logged in. They've been trying for ages to convince me to create an account and I haven't seen the need to, but I'd do it in an instant if that were the price of admission for all the at-a-glance information I want on one page. The technology exists - iGoogle did it in 2005!
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