Not everything on the web…

Saw this tweet yesterday from a friend:

Not everything on the web has to be a freaking “experience.” Sometimes you just want to check the weather.

Especially important as we start to create Flash content for mobile devices. Sometimes your users just want the info.

Related posts:

  1. Flash Player Multi-Touch: Confirmation from Kevin Lynch
  2. HTC Hero is the First Android Phone with Flash Support
  3. Flash Player on the Palm Pre and the $10 million Open Screen Project Fund
  4. Flex 2.0 and Hawaii
  5. AIR and Flash Player coming for Android and Mobile Devices
  • Ross R

    I think the trick is in finding a balance between giving people that just want the weather an easy way to get the weather, and those that want the experience of exploring the weather data (radar maps, forecasts by the hour/day/week/month, historical data) what they want.

    The real key in experience/interactive design is to understand that it is only a well designed experience if it is BOTH easy to get the basic information AND interactive for those that want more.

    In terms of weather, this is a real problem on weather.com, for instance. I often want to find the information on the forecast for snow amounts in the winter for my area… I can easily get the hour-by-hour (even down to 15-minute segments) information about actual temperature, what it feels like, and chance of precipitation – but the simple metric of “how much snow is supposed to come in this storm?” seems to be beyond the scope of information give (or buried)

  • ryanstewart

    Bang on! I think that’s a great way to put it Ross. Wanting a simple piece of data is one thing, but if you want to drill down into that data and make it useful, that’s a great place for the “experience”.