Itinerant – a fuzzy weather forecast app (opens in new tab)

I think this goes a bit too much in the "imprecise" direction, so much so that it doesn't convey actual useful information (at least in those images shown). First off, short-term weather forecasts are not inaccurate, for the most part, so knowing that the temperature will be 21C (±1 degree) is more informative than knowing it'll be "brownish mass". Secondly, the heatmap style makes more sense when it's overlaid on top of an actual map, and you have an actual scale to interpret it.

What does "cool", "warm", "warmer" mean in here?

That being said, the images look pretty nifty, so it has that going for it.

I like the app, it’s very intuitive, I’m considering making it my go-to weather resource. I think it could be improved by adding an hourly forecast - perhaps consider adding a slider for how the blob will change over the course of the next 24 hours?

I've been meaning to put something similar together for a while now. The visuals in this one are certainly more striking than what I had in mind. Neat!

Looks great! Any thoughts on adding humidity?

I really like this. Reminds me of the difference between analog and digital watches: the former gives you a "fuzzy" time, but also a more visceral understanding of how "close" one time is to another. Maximum precision can be useful, but it also feels unnatural, more appropriate for machines than humans. It's important to remember that accuracy and precision are not the same thing!

This would be incredible as a live background, both because it's aesthetically stunning, and also for the information it can provide at a glance. I don't know enough about iOS to know whether (weather?) that's possible or not.

Beautiful! Mapping data into raw-er perceptual forms feels like a rich area for exploration, plus you get to flex coding and design skill at the same time. Any plans for an android port?

I like the idea of leveraging our already powerful sense of vision and pattern matching to communicate the weather but I feel like this does more to hinder understanding than it does to facilitate it.

If you're going to use a visual language, why not use one that people already know and recognize instead of introducing new patterns/symbols that you have to learn?

Do you have any plans to port it to Android. Would love to try out the app.

This is absolutely brilliant. The only barrier I see to these new visual languages is the initial barrier to learning the language. Either way, I hope more human interface research starts exploring this avenue.

The idea that vision is so powerful that it can recognize shapes to the point of building a language instantly reminded me of the language used by the aliens in Arrival (https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/14/dissecting-the-alien-lan...). I'm sure Itinerant won't go so far as create a whole new grammar but both the blurry, ink-like feeling and the reliance on patterns are interesting.

I think a free demo should be available, or at least some clear evidence of what information this app provides that a traditional one doesn’t. You have mentioned some of the shortcomings of traditional apps, but you have not demonstrated solving those. As of now, this app seems more of a beautiful art project than a pragmatic weather app, to me.

While I still want to see the actual data, I would love this as the background for my weather display. For the same reason I like analog/digital watch combos: if you're just walking by, you can get a useful approximation, but the very precise data is still right there when you want it.

quite amazing, would love this as a background on both phone and desktop