COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I looked at a variation of competitors such as Accuweather, Windy, Buoycast, Windfinder, Sailflow and Magic Seaweed. However, I chose two apps, NOAA Weather Radar Live: Climate and Windy.App to do in-depth analyses on. I split this into 5 sections:
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Key objectives
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Overall strategies
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Market advantages
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UX design
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SWOT analysis
Opportunities I saw:
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Adding a sports or passion-related interface could personalize the experience a bit more
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Customized information shown in the weather summary screen would make the information more palatable
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Users should be able to turn off alerts that aren’t relevant or are annoying to see often
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Cross-community engagement can be increased by encouraging more social engagement
USER INTERVIEWS AND SURVEY
I collected insights via a survey posted on various dive forums and sent through my personal diving network. I also interviewed 4 participants with a range of dive experiences ranging from Open Water Divers to Dive Masters.
The goal of this was to better understand what features are important to the dive community, how divers use their devices to access dive and weather information, and that the diving community wanted to bring the community spirit into the app so they can interact with them
pre-and-post trip.
After analyzing the survey and interviews, I was able to boil the findings down to 3 key insights:
1) Users want more than just a weather app
2) Forecasts are great but need to come with dive-relevant recommendations/tips
3) Apps should leverage the close-knit dive community to enrich app content
USER PERSONAS AND JOURNEYS
After analyzing the research results, I created user personas to better give the research a human face and narrative, and to ensure that I keep the user audiences at the forefront of my mind during every phase of the design process.
Meet the three personas:
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Nelly - The beginner diver going on her first trip
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Aaron - An intermediate diver who loves to go on dive adventures with his underwater camera
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Hank - The seasoned dive master who spends his free time teaching scuba diving on the side.
I then created user journeys for each persona. This exercise was useful in helping me understand and address user needs and pain points. It gave me the working knowledge to uncover gaps in the user experience, as well as identify the different ways to enable the user to achieve their goal as quickly and easily as possible.
