Meteorological Service of Canada
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NOTE: The app may only be downloaded by devices with a location in Canada.
Weather forecasting by national weather services has improved steadily over the last few decades to the point where the level of detail in space and in time of published weather information is much higher than in the past. While the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) continues to invest in producing ever more accurate and precise forecasts with increasing detail, we also must ensure that what we do produce is communicated to the public in the most useful and useable manner possible.
As a result, MSC wants your help coming up with ideas for adapting its first mobile weather app to best convey weather-related information usefully and intuitively. The app, called WeatherCAN (English) and MétéoCAN (Français) can be downloaded for free from the Apple Store or Google Play Store:
To complete this challenge, download the app (link above) and answer the following questions in detail. You are encouraged to include app screenshots to help us understand your answers.
- MSC released the WeatherCAN / MétéoCAN app on February 14, 2019. Explore the app and explain what changes would make the user experience better and the information/data offered by the app more valuable. Consider different menu styles, re-arranged groupings, format, and more.
- What additional weather related information/data would make the app more valuable to users that the current version does not offer? Explain why.
- Traditionally, text and weather icons have been used to convey forecast information over 12-hour forecasts and for large regions. (See Box 1.) Does this traditional way provide the information in a manner that is clearly understood or are there ways to enhance it or represent the information more clearly? One possible solution is to represent hour-by-hour forecasts (See Box 2), which provides higher temporal detail but loses the summary and explicit description of transition periods. Furthermore, exceptions for some areas within the region are lost. How would you exploit and convey high spatiotemporal forecast details that the MSC can generate now and in the future from state-of-the-art computer weather models and powerful supercomputers?
NOTE: If you attach your submission as a PDF, PPT, Word Doc, or other file type, you must still paste your answer text into the body of the submission window. Failure to do so will result in a lower score.
NOTE: Answers must be submitted in English.
