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A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

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Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#101

Post by skadamat »

pasc1878 wrote: post #94
expensive_news wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re correct. I used Dark Sky for years and switched to the default iOS app when Apple bought Dark Sky and added all of the functionality to Weather. I did prefer the design of Dark Sky, since the data was larger and more visually separate from the background, allowing it to be more readable at a glance. But I found that after the big update they had essentially the same functionality and the same UI.

It is not the same UI It might be functionally the same e.g. It only shows conditions for the next 5 hours - not all day - how can you tell if you need a raincopat if you go ot. I am on an iPhone in portrait mode. DarkSky showed this as a column of data Weather as a row. This is fundamental to the whole UI.

Author here -- Apple was definitely inspired by Dark Sky but IMO it's hard to argue that it's a replacement.

If you compare the # of clicks it takes and the amount of time it takes to interpret information for the same task for Dark Sky vs the Apple Weather app, it becomes clear that the Apple Weather app "isn't quite there yet". But I hope it will be soon!

If your needs are straightforward, then the Weather app is a pretty good replacement.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#102

Post by dguest »

screamingninja wrote: post #68
moneywoes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any good alternatives since?

https://www.windy.com/ Probably some of the best visualization techniques I have seen. Free features cover most use cases; premium gives you better resolution.

Windy is awesome, although a bit overkill if you just want to know if it's going to rain in your town later today.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#103

Post by jameshart »

mason55 wrote: post #93
jameshart wrote: post #40

Dark Sky was okay. As detailed here, it does a great job of centering on the actual user needs of weather app users. Unfortunately, it also demonstrated that which users you focus on matters a lot. Dark Sky is great at answering the weather questions of people who live in places where rain showers are short lasting; where temperatures range from ‘cool’ to ‘hot’; and where storms are infrequent, special events. Basica…

I live in the mountains in Colorado and DarkSky was by far the best UX for viewing upcoming weather. The way they presented projected hourly snowfall was especially good, as was the projected snowfall by day. With Apple Weather, you get a snow icon and a percentage for future days. For DarkSky it was an actual projected snowfall amounts, which is so much more useful. Are we expecting 2 inches? Or 20? On a daily basis…

I said it was okay. Just don’t feel like it had the most incredible human-centric weather UI that is often touted for it.

When I evaluated it, my main concerns were things like ‘am I gonna have to dig the car out in the morning?’ and ‘is that thunderstorm heading right for me or just to one side?’ - and those were not things I felt Dark Sky did particularly well. The old weatherspark visualizations used to be much better, but they seem to have vanished.

Which is fine! Tools can be great for some things and not others! I just find it surprising that it is touted as having hot weather presentation ‘right’. I’m still waiting for better.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#104

Post by azemetre »

jameshart wrote: post #40

Dark Sky was okay. As detailed here, it does a great job of centering on the actual user needs of weather app users. Unfortunately, it also demonstrated that which users you focus on matters a lot. Dark Sky is great at answering the weather questions of people who live in places where rain showers are short lasting; where temperatures range from ‘cool’ to ‘hot’; and where storms are infrequent, special events. Basica…

I lived in both Florida and Massachusetts, using DarkSky was amazing in both climates. I think your geographical bias is more telling than your app usage.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#105

Post by skadamat »

cubefox wrote: post #51

Related: Weather apps could in general be better, not just in terms of visualization. One thing which always annoys me is how they handle rain predictions. They give "probabilities" for rain. But what do those mean? The probability that it rains for at least one minute in the given time frame? And with at least x mm/inches of rain coming down? And isn't a low probability of short and weak rain totally different from…

Author here -- I wholeheartedly agree. I recommend reading up on some of the research in uncertainty visualization. There's a good example of visualizing the probability that a bus will arrive in the next X minutes that feels similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1kSnWvqCw0

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#106

Post by Camillo »

jwestbury wrote: post #14
strict9 wrote: post #8

It was a masterpiece. Apple deleting Dark Sky something I will never forgive them for. Maybe not enough to make me switch phones, but enough to make me look elsewhere when needing peripheral items. The statement that Dark Sky features were incorporated into the native weather app was an insult. I know I sound dramatic talking about a weather app, but it was in a class of its own and nothing else is remotely comparabl…

Can I just piggyback on this to shit on the iOS Weather app for a moment? Whoever designed it doesn't understand the concept of daily max/min temperatures, and the daily low presented in the app is the lowest during that calendar day, rather than the forecast overnight low following the day. It drives me absolutely mad, because I can never reliably determine how cold it will get overnight without going into the hourl…

Here's an egregious UX error in the Apple Weather app: when you look at the precipitation map, it animates the situation throughout the day, but the current time it's showing is only indicated by the cursor in a timeline at the bottom. Your location in the center in the map, where you want to look, only shows the current temperature and weather: it does not animate with the timeline and the rest of the map, and does not show the time the map is currently reflecting. So if you look at the center of the screen you have no idea what time's situation the map is showing, and if you look at the bottom you can see the time, but not the situation. You have to stop the animation, manually drag the cursor to "now", look at the storm pattern, then manually drag it an hour forward, look at the map again, etc.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#107

Post by dguest »

moneywoes wrote: post #33
strict9 wrote: post #8

It was a masterpiece. Apple deleting Dark Sky something I will never forgive them for. Maybe not enough to make me switch phones, but enough to make me look elsewhere when needing peripheral items. The statement that Dark Sky features were incorporated into the native weather app was an insult. I know I sound dramatic talking about a weather app, but it was in a class of its own and nothing else is remotely comparabl…

Any good alternatives since?

I'm a huge fan of a few government sponsored ones:

- A great simple one is YR: https://www.yr.no/en

- if you happen to be in Switzerland: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.admin.meteo..., https://apps.apple.com/us/app/meteoswiss/id589772015

Government sponsored apps are great because there's no advertising, they aren't selling your data, and they are free. They usually pay to collect the data, run the models, and provide the API anyway. Providing the app is the cheap part.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#108

Post by jameshart »

drcongo wrote: post #79
mazork wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Montreal and I loved Dark Sky. So I'll disagree.

UK here where we have all the weather all the time. I also disagree.

I used to think the UK had all the weather too. Then I moved to New England, which still doesn’t get all the weather, but compared to the UK, feels like the weather is turned up to 11.

What the UK has is changeable weather, which is, as I say, what dark sky excels at helping you with (‘will I need me brolly? Or will it blow away?’)

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#109

Post by s0rce »

moneywoes wrote: post #33
strict9 wrote: post #8

It was a masterpiece. Apple deleting Dark Sky something I will never forgive them for. Maybe not enough to make me switch phones, but enough to make me look elsewhere when needing peripheral items. The statement that Dark Sky features were incorporated into the native weather app was an insult. I know I sound dramatic talking about a weather app, but it was in a class of its own and nothing else is remotely comparabl…

Any good alternatives since?

If you are in the USA the national weather service is great, its not flashy but good and you can read the text forecast discussion.

Otherwise

Windy.com and Meteoblue are good.

Re: A eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece

#110

Post by phailhaus »

doctoboggan wrote: post #42
phailhaus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not good enough. I'm going to be out for the whole day: do I need an umbrella? I want to know that immediately. It's such basic information that it needs to be always at hand.

The app also tells you that. For example at the top of the app now I see a message “Rainy conditions expected around 3pm”

As the author points out, text like that is inferior to embedding information in the graphic. The reason is that with text, I have to just "hope" that they've handled all the cases that I care about, and at the fidelity that is relevant to me. With a graphic, this information is always available, and combining multiple elements tells me more information than a single text snippet can. For example: "Oh, it's only going to be drizzly for like an hour, I'll be in a meeting around then anyways." That's a decision that 'rainy conditions expected around 3pm' does not help me with.
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