1. IxD Studio Project 1: Recreating the Masters
Weathermob App
Lisa Woods, CCA MFA Design, January 2012

2. Weathermob is a free iPhone app that was
released in 2011. It is designed to let people
talk about the weather (in 100 characters
or less) and share their mood, comments,
photos, and video.
It has been dubbed a “social weather” app.

3. Weathermob was created by a London/
Boston-based start-up* with experience in:
• television media
• technology
• social media
• branding
* Founded and created by former Channel 4 (UK) executive Julia LeStage, media magnate, tech
investor and Chairman of ASOS.com, Lord Waheed Alli, experienced CTO Ben Griffiths, social
media specialist Frank Lampen, veteran tech investor Tori Hackett and brand guru Adge Gittins.

4. What is going on here? Why has this
seemingly non-utilitarian and redundant
app become so globally popular so quickly?
Within a few weeks of launch, Weathermob has seen reports from the
US, UK, Brazil, India, Japan, Australia, UAE, Mexico…and even from the
Himalayas, with a picture report posted from Nepal.
Instagram + Twitter + weather = Weathermob

5. Weathermob Prototype
To simulate the story-creation aspect of To simulate the social dimension of Weathermob,
Weathermob, I created a paper prototype with I asked folks in the studio to draw an emoticon of
simple sliding panels for the weather, emoticon, their current mood over a 3-day period. The quick
and icons. drawings are very evocative and surprisingly diverse.

6. level 1: pick 3 icons level 2: add text
“For crying out cloud, what’s your weather?”

7. level 3: add photo or video level 4: comment
“That’s really n ice!”

8. “Sometimes I wish I was a palm tree.”

9. beautiful photo
inspiring
sentiment
lots of double
“Great weather to create something!” emoticon-ing
going on

10. Weathermob’s combinations of brief text,
emoticons, iconography and photos or video
create short but complete stories that are
as easy to share as they are to create.
Participants are emotionally engaged and
are drawn to express themselves and browse
one others’ stories.

11. Are some people are really only happy
when it rains? Is a city’s cheerfulness
directly proportional to how many sunny
days it gets a year?

12. Now we can know. Weathermob is
publishing daily mood rankings of major
US and UK cities via the app and Twitter.
San Francisco is consistently “Cheerful.”

13. Central to Weathermob are emotions.
Being aware of them, expressing them,
sharing them, connecting them to our
environment, and checking in to see how
others are feeling.
“Social weather” is within as well as
without.

14. Weathermob’s appeal:
delightful
not socially pushy
quirky iconography
minimalist interface
fosters a certain kind culture

15. Weathermob sits in the broader context of
affective computing.
(Affective communication is communicating
with someone, or something, either with or
about emotion.)

16. Computer Mediated
Human-to-Human Emotional Expression
“A few months back, Facebook introduced “Most social networks allow for ‘likes’ [...] “Xin Li’s technology stores the neutral
the new “Like” button [...] Since its launch, but most don’t support a range of posi- face—and the face-warping software—
nearly two million websites have added tive and negative emotions. We antici- on the recipient’s phone. When a mes-
the small icon with a picture of a ‘thumbs pate users will respond positively to new senger keys in text symbols—such as :)
up’ to their webpages.” addition, as the ability to quickly react to for a smile—the neutral face assumes the
http://mucollegeofcomm.wordpress. moments shared by friends and visually appropriate (well, sort of) expression.”
com/2010/12/14/like-it-or-not-facebooks- assess how others are reacting are nice http://www.technologyreview.com/communica-
%E2%80%9Clike%E2%80%9D-button-causes-users- conveniences.” tions/18641/
to-question-online-privacy/
http://mashable.com/2011/01/18/path-emotions/

17. Computer-to-Human Emotional Expression
“Controversy rages over anthropomorphism: Should we leverage this expertise in
the service of computer interface design, since attributing human characteristics to
machines often means setting unrealistic and unfulfillable expectations about the
machine’s capabilities? Show a human face, expect human capabilities that far out-
strip the machine?”
http://affect.media.mit.edu/areas.php?id=communication

18. Computer Mediated
Human-to-Self (Reflexive) Emotional Communication
“Affective communication with oneself—reflexive communication—explores the
exciting possibilities of giving people access to their own physiological patterns in
ways previously unavailable.”
http://affect.media.mit.edu/areas.php?id=communication

19. Emotional Expression as Mass Data
“We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion. It continually harvests sentences
containing the phrase ‘I feel’ or ‘I am feeling’ from the Internet’s newly posted blog
entries, saves them in a database, and displays them in an interactive Java applet,
which runs in a web browser [...] We Feel Fine collects around 15,000 new feelings per
day, and has saved over 13 million feelings since 2005, forming a constantly evolving
portrait of human emotion.”
http://www.number27.org/wefeelfine.html

20. :0]