The Weather Canada App required a robust UI/UX design to serve both professional and general users. The challenge was to create a seamless, accessible experience for sailors, construction professionals, and the general public while maintaining a high level of accuracy and usability for professional meteorological data.
Environment and Climate Change Canada is responsible for coordinating environmental policies and programs, as well as preserving and enhancing the natural environment and renewable resources.
Environment and Climate Change Canada needed to revamp its existing weather app with a modern, user-friendly design while incorporating new functionality. The government agency partnered with ROSSUL, a leading UI/UX design firm, to achieve the following goals:
The previous app did not meet the current Canadian accessibility standards. We redesigned the interface in conformance to Level AA, ensuring the app was accessible for users with common eye and vision conditions. We also added high-contrast, light, and dark modes to accommodate the varying visual needs of users.
The UI was developed around the goal of eliminating unnecessary elements to create an easy-to-navigate, streamlined user experience. We significantly revised the original layout of the weather data, simplifying it and removing redundant navigation while improving access to all application features. Every element was studied and removed from the design if deemed unnecessary to the app’s functionality. This way, we could create an exceedingly clean UI while allowing the client to add new features, like Air Quality. The Radar Settings screen was also completely redesigned to make it more self-explanatory and easier to understand.
To ensure that all users would have optimal, seamless mobile experiences, ROSSUL designed universal applications for both IOS and Android devices. We took into account the size and orientation differences to create an app that can be easily viewed and used vertically and horizontally. The result is a UI that looks and functions beautifully on both smartphones and tablets.
Effective and cohesive visual communication is foundational to the success of any UI, and one of the critical business goals for the redesign was to create a consistent look and feel. From colour palettes to style guidelines to layouts, every element of the refreshed design was thoughtfully reviewed to develop a design system that allowed for a unified user experience. We also created a high-quality icon family to instantly communicate the weather status in any configuration of snow, rain, wind, sun, etc. The consistent and compelling weather icons are quick to scan and are immediately understood by users.