The Weather Channel Lean UX Case Study

 The Weather Channel
 Lean UX Case Study: Travel Weather
 Presented by
 Jeff Hutkoff, The Weather Channel
 Aaron Sanders, Comakers
1

Who are we?
Jeff Hutkoff, Ph.C.
 iPhone and Android phone apps product
owner – The Weather Channel
 #7 downloaded iTunes app of all time
 #1 weather app
 Tens of millions of downloads
 Top 100 daily ranked iTunes Free app
 Agile since September 17, 2012
 Co-located teams
 Complete P&L responsibility
 Lean UX and rapid prototyping
 Mandate:
 Build products users love
 Go faster than waterfall allowed
2

Aaron Sanders :: @aremsan
Co-founder of Comakers, LLC :: @comakewithus
We know how great it feels to make kick-ass products
with our friends. You should, too.
3

www.comakewith.us :: youshould@comakewith.us
Our job in software is to change the world

Discovery
release cycle
development
cycle
Validated learning happens in discovery-
discovery wraps delivery
Delivery

Discovery looks a lot like Design Thinking

Product Owners must balance lots of
concerns

The Product Owner is a leader
PO does not capture
requirements
PO is not a “spec
monkey”
PO is not a project
manager

Product owners lead a team
Together the team:
 Works with
stakeholders
 Learns from
customers and users
 Collaborates with
delivery team
members
 Creates a product
backlog
 Designs, validates,
and describes the
details of the product

Discovery work fuels development work

Backlog items are continuously and
collaboratively designed and defined

Getting software into users’ hands is the
real goal

Everything at once

Travel Weather
Pre-discovery
• Commitments
• Hypotheses
Design/Development
• Prototype Testing
• Results
• User Testing
UI/UX Optimization
Travel Product Backlog
Discovery
• Discovery
• Hypothesis
• Results
• MVP
• Use Cases

Pre-Discovery
Commitments
• Sales wanted a “business traveler tool”
• Ad sponsorship sold to client across TV,
web, and mobile in Dec 2012
• June 1 committed start date for mobile
platforms (iPhone, iPad, Android)
Sponsorship was secured well before product
discovery could be conducted by the newly
formed agile teams

Early Discovery
Contracted 3rd party testing service to ask general questions
about TWC users’ business travel needs:
• What business travel means to you?
• What mobile tools you use to prepare for business travel?
• When you use your iPhone for travel?
• How often would you use iPhone travel tools?
• What weather conditions do you care about when traveling?
No TWC product person talked to actual customers…but we snuck in
some questions to test a theory

Early Discovery
Business Traveler Results
The concept of “Business Traveler” is confusing:
• "I travel for recreation. Can I use this too? What if I commute across town?
Can I use this for that purpose?"
• Even business travelers were confused, Why should I use these tools rather
than going to my airline's flight tracker?
• “Commute Weather” as a feature tested very well (road conditions, delays
and how weather affecting) vs. airplane travel.
• Also, while "Business Traveler" was confusing, users suggested “Travel
Weather” as both improving clarity and driving interest in the feature toolset.

Early Discovery
NEW Narrowed Focus:
• Users on the go with their iPhones are more interested in the weather
moving across well known, well used driving routes, rather than
one-time airplane journeys
• By focusing on re-usable route information and showcasing weather
across these routes rather than air travel information, we can address
user needs for adjusting and preparing for their daily travels
• We can engage users in a Travel section as a daily habit by providing
a tool to plan and adjust the timing of their daily trips
Now we started talking to actual customers

Weekly User Testing
In the field and in the lab…

Focused Early Discovery (2 sprints)
Finding:
Users named more than 2 dozen capabilities they wanted in this feature.
But there was a core experience that shined through…
Early Discovery - We showed users lo-fi sketch concepts… all for driving route
products.
1 2 3

Mid-Discovery (multiple rounds cont.)
Mid Discovery
What we discovered:
Tool set up and usage are the same but use case falls into 2 categories
> Daily usage:
1. Commuting >10 miles
2. Local highway driving
3. Longer non-highway drives
4. Timing departures
5. Informational – traffic impacts
6x per year road trips:
1. No commute, or
2. Commute short-distance
3. “No freeway” commutes
4. Same commute every day
5. Pre-planned out of area
trips every other month
Key Finding: Super-serving the daily driver served 80% of the 6x per year
customer

Evolving to Minimum Marketable Product
Weather on
route
Radar
animation
Weather on
route
Radar
animation
Traffic layer
Weather on
route
Radar
animation
Traffic layer
Turn x turn
directions
Weather on route
Radar animation
Traffic layer
Turn x turn directions
Points of interest
Weather on route
Traffic layer
Turn x turn directions
Points of interest
Push alerts
Alternate route suggestions
Report/rate your commute
Time your commute with
historical trends
Radio/audio traffic reports
% of users affected by
weather in your area
Drag your own route on map
Discovery
1st round
2nd
round
3rd
round 4th
round
Final
MMP Evolution Pathway
Users want us to keep Travel simple for them to quickly use on the go
Successive rounds of user testing distilled the travel experience to a core set of
features valuable to daily users and buildable to hit the hard date of June 1

Mid-Discovery (multiple rounds)
Mid-Discovery (User testing at User Insights with Balsamiq tool)
Users walked us through how they would use travel tools:
• Accessing the tool
• Adding a route
• Adding start and end points
• Selecting from route choices
• Naming a route
• Saving a route
• Confirming route saved
• Recalling a saved route
• Moving around saved route map
• Animating the weather map
• Editing/deleting a saved route
• Recalling a saved route from a
list
• Closing the tool

Prototype using FieldTest clickable mock
Prototype Testing (3 sprints to deadline)
• Pull down tab on Maps page
• Add/Delete functionality
• Routing setup and recall

UI/UX Optimization using clickable mock
Iterative improvements to the Travel feature pre-5.4 release included:
• Add simple tutorial to draw attention to Travel
• Icon-focused button to access Travel
• Modulate opacity to keep more of map visible at all times
• Color palate match between Travel button, Play button and Expand button
• Collapse route set up screens

Final Refinement – and Release!
Iterative touch ups prior to launch:
• Vertical alignment of animation control buttons
• Added Stop and Clear Route buttons
• Thickened and darkened line representing route

Lessons Learned
• Use all available prototyping tools but start with paper
• Regiment user testing to fail fast and recover
• Focus team on 1 project at a time
• Do less, iterate more
• Time box activities
• “I think” vs. “users say”

The Weather Channel Lean UX Case Study

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The Weather Channel Lean UX Case Study