Objective
Create a weather app that primarily focuses on keeping the user comfortable by suggesting the types of clothing that would be most fit for the day depending on the weather to save us time, energy, and improve our chances of being comfortable – which is just one less thing we have to worry about.
Problem
Depending on the weather, it can be difficult to figure out what exactly to wear to keep comfortable during the day because of things like humidity, wind, sun, and all the other weather elements. Making a wrong choice can lead us to feel too hot, too cold, or just uncomfortable throughout the day.
Solution
Design a weather app that allows us to check the weather and have a suggested set of clothing available to help guide our decision while getting dressed.
Read my full case study for this project here on Medium.
Mind Maps & Sketches
In the ideation phase, I like to brainstorm ideas in order to discover possible solutions, and sketch potential layouts and other design elements all while keeping the necessary requirements in mind.
Task Flows
Creating task flows allows me to set clear expectations of the journey that a user will take in order to complete a task or accomplish a goal. Doing this helps me avoid missing obvious steps or other key elements that should be included in the design.
Wireframes
The process of creating wireframes helps me explore different layouts at a higher level before committing to the finer details of the visual design. This saves time in the process because it easier to adapt a wireframe than a more flushed out, high-fidelity design.
Visual UI
These visual design mockups of the user interface combine usability and functionality (gathered through the UX process steps above) and aesthetics (including typography, white space, layouts, color, etc.) to create a final version (which will be reiterated on) of the design.
Reflection
I think overall this design tackles all the key points fairly well. Assuming that the technology exists to find the optimal articles of clothing for every type of weather, then yes, I believe this concept design works.
However, one of the main obstacles I ran into was in determining the actual style of clothes to suggest— and one issue I avoided from adding in this version of the design is giving the option to toggle between genders (that can also get very complicated in terms of political correctness in itself).
When digging deeper into suggesting what to wear, I discovered that there are many, many different types of clothing to choose from. For instance, there are many interchangeable pieces, especially in women’s clothing, like skirts, shorts, all kinds of dresses, lightweight pants, the list goes on and on, which would make suggesting what clothes to wear that much more difficult.
Because of that obstacle, I decided to play it safe and stick to common articles of clothing, such as pants vs shorts, for example, or t-shirt vs long-sleeve vs sweatshirt, and sneakers vs flip-flops. For this version of this concept, I believe keeping it simple was the way to go.