Product Vision

Humanized Climate

Weather photographs aid in the understanding of the weather sensor values and it can be made more appealing by providing friendlier language, visuals, explanations & education, smart behavior-predictive suggestions, and up-front weather notices including alerts for safety and preparedness.

One example of this idea is that by understanding that weather is relative, Ecosphere could use time and place comparisons to help users more accurately and quickly understand how the weather may feel. In addition, it could provide information and teach users the weather data metrics that the majority of people do not understand. With the extra context on the metrics, persona Sarah could gain a better understanding of the day's weather and better prepare for it.

This idea of humanized weather can also be extended to travel by providing users with important metrics based on location. For example, in Thailand, humidity is an important weather metric, but that would not be on the radars of first-time visitors if they live somewhere where humidity does not affect them often, such as the Bay Area. Ecosphere could learn to predict this and offer that insight to help persona John while he is looking up the conditions for his next trip.

Visual Climate

This idea focuses and expands upon the live weather photographs that the Ecosphere station records. Ecosphere could further immerse the user in visual information by providing weather photographs across an area, in contrast to a pinpoint location as it currently provides.

This idea can be expanded to microclimate areas, providing a collage-view of the sky in a neighborhood, or to large areas such as a city. This information would provide Sarah with more visual information to reliably and quickly understand the weather from a glance.

Visual weather can also expand linearly to provide the conditions along roads for scenarios including commutes and long road trips. This would help John prepare for a wide variety of road conditions on his way to his next trip in Tahoe and see that rain had already begun falling on the road towards his destination.

Local Climate

Ecosphere's network of weather stations allows it to accurately calculate and forecast weather for small areas such as neighborhoods, dependent upon the number of stations as well as the length of the area's data collection history. In the future, this could inform John that the seaside where he is planning a biking day trip is much colder than the city average, or it could help Sarah better choose her children's outerwear because the school they attend for most of the day is much warmer than the city average.

This idea can also be expanded into the social and business realms to provide outlets for community leaders and businesses to communicate with their audiences. For example, a park could provide its weather conditions via the app, a widget on its websites, and other touchpoints, so John or Sarah could see a view of the place and get a better idea of its weather conditions.

Backcast Climate

Because Ecosphere creates and distributes its own weather stations, it has the potential to provide detailed and insightful historic weather data and gain data independence and trust over time.

This idea could be extended to certain features such as video scrubbing for historic weather photos and data, which would allow users to scan a set timeframe at their own pace (rewinding, fast-forwarding, slowing down, speeding up, pausing). This would help both John review his home station's daily weather data—rewinding and fast-forwarding when he sees something interesting—and Sarah review the day's weather with her children at all their paces.

Global Climate

On the other end of the spectrum of local, Ecosphere has the opportunity to bring faraway places nearby. It could provide weather content browsing for interesting, beautiful, and landmark areas and events around the world. This could take the route of content curation or community content through tagging and appreciation. This would provide John with more to look at when he is taking a break from work, or Sarah with more to show her children during their times of sharing or both of them when planning where to visit for their next holiday.