MyRadar
Adding a pollen tracking feature to MyRadar weather app
MyRadar provides an extremely fast way to get an overall at-a-glance check at potential radar precipitation headed your way. MyRadar provides high-definition radar,NOAA weather alerts, temperatures, forecasts, a detailed hurricane tracker, and photo sharing. However, the app lacks a few features that are available on competing apps; specifically, pollen/allergy alerts. Through research and design iterations, my team and I designed a new pollen-tracking feature to keep MyRadar as current and competitive as possible.
Project Background
Team
Zoe Capps, Gabby Coll, Kevin Jackson, Megan Mitchell, Cecilia Zhou**
Sprint
Two weeks; October 2021
Research
Market research, user interviews, affinity mapping, comparative and competitive analyses, user survey, and usability testing.
Design
Research informed the design process to create a persona, problem statement, user flows, sketching, wireframes, and prototypes.
Tools
Figma, Photoshop, Miro, Trello, Canva
**As a team, we discussed what we look for in a functional and productive team to best understand each other's needs and create an environment where we felt open to working collaboratively to solve problems and complete tasks. We used Trello to track and manage our timelines and duties.
Research: Discover & Empathize
Our initial research showed that three out of five competing weather applications include an allergy-tracking feature. Around 60 million people have allergic rhinitis and more than 25 million people in the United States suffer from pollen allergies*. This data suggested that adding this feature would greatly improve MyRadar’s usage and functionality. We interviewed users to gather data about their weather app usage and to validate this assumption, and our findings informed our next steps.
*Source: Healthline
Comparative and Competitive Analysis
I started our research by conducting competitive analysis with other weather-tracking apps that had over 1 million reviews and 4.5 stars or more. Through a feature analysis of these competitors, I got a better sense of how to build out the pollen tracking feature on MyRadar.
60 million
People in the U.S. have allergic rhinitis
25 million
People in the U.S. have pollen allergies
3/5
Competing weather apps include an allergy tracking feature
Human Input:
Interviews and Affinity Mapping
4 users
Based in the United States
Users of any weather-tracking app
Key interview takeaways:
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Most users check the weather in the morning.
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All users expressed that they like to know the weather in a destination prior to traveling.
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Most users expressed that they liked the radar feature, 2-week forecast, and hourly forecasts.
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Users' main pain points were disruptive ads in their apps and inaccurate weather predictions.
Getting into specifics: Allergy survey
I wrote and distributed a survey with users who suffered from allergies & who used pollen tracking app(s). 10 people participated in the survey, and the results informed the design phase of our pollen tracking feature for MyRadar:
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1. The features included in the final design were based on survey responses
2. 100% of users don't have notifications on; we did not enable notifications in our feature
3. 60% of users preferred to have different allergen information presented separately; the feature was designed with this in mind.
Define: personas and user flows
With the information gathered from user interviews, we created a user persona to represent our target audience and took them through user flows to represent their usage of the newly designed pollen tracking feature on the app.
Problem & Solution Statements
Problem Statement
Users need a way to access allergen information such as pollen counts in their area because they want to be proactive in managing their allergies.
How Might We?
How might we establish an efficient and accurate method for users to predict how their allergies will be affected on any given day.
Solution
Add a feature into an existing weather app to show the in-time pollen rate in the region where users travel along the road.
Ideate & design
Taking into consideration findings from our research, I designed and prototyped a brand new pollen tracking feature integrated directly into MyRadar’s existing interface and design system.
Prototype & test
After creating a first prototype, we conducted usability tests with 4 users, moderated and recorded via Zoom. These were the goals while testing:
SITUATION:
You live in Minneapolis and have seasonal allergies and are about to explore the new pollen tracking feature on MyRadar’s weather app.
Tasks:
You notice the MyRadar app has an update available; show me how you would go through the app’s update onboarding process.
After going through the app's update onboarding process, show me how you would find the pollen levels in your area (Minneapolis).
You’re planning to take your family on a trip to Busch Gardens theme park in Tampa, FL; show me how you would find the allergen forecast for your upcoming trip.
Testing goals:
Users will be able to go through the onboarding process and find their pollen information in under 3 minutes
Users will be able to find the pollen levels with fewer than 2 errors
Testing results
Overall flows were straightforward and users completed tasks with relative ease.
Iterations to prototype:
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Increased the hit area in the pollen feature navigation arrow.
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In addition to the "search" function at the bottom left to search for a new location, we made the city name at the top of the screen clickable to input search terms.
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Changed the design of the onboarding process so that buttons don't look clickable.
Final takeaways
After the iterations we made on the first prototype, we conducted a second set of usability tests, and all users were able to complete all flows with few or no errors.