Methodology

The Breakdown was never meant to be a full scale directory of apps, rather, it’s every app that I’ve reviewed by hand I order to get a comprehensive look and assessment into each app. If you’re building an app in a category you’re probably going to track at most a couple. This list should do a good job of doing that work for you. The list itself is derived from apps that have made the most popular free download list over the past several quarters. The majority, if not all, of the key apps in the category should be covered.

 

APP QUALITY ASSESSMENT

Quality:  Denotes the overall quality of the weather app.   If you were to use the app, is your overall impression that this is a solid, useful, well-done app?  This is holistic and subjective.

Design Quality:  Asks whether the design looks put together or not.  Breaks out into three broad categories:

  • Excellent:  Beautiful, artistic, and exceptional design across app.
  • Good:  Professional and pleasant; the design is not distracting
  • Average: Does the job, some obvious low-fi design
  • Poor: Design is enough a turn-off to consider alternatives

UX Quality:  Looks at how easy it is to find features, move within app, interact with the app.  Four categories:

  • Excellent:  Some truly novel interaction efforts among weather apps
  • Good:  Easy to move around app
  • Average: OK, sections are hard to use because of navigational placement
  • Poor: Difficult or annoying to find features

Speed Quality:  Considers how quick the app calls weather information to make the app useful.  Three categories:

  • Fast:  No noticeable loading of data
  • Delays:  App may hang while data is loading; manageable as a user
  • Painful: Incredibly long wait times; app crashes

Data Quality:  Asks whether the weather information being offered to user is useful or not.  Four categories:

  • Excellent:  Unusually unique or creative offering within weather apps
  • Differentiated:  A unique angle or data source
  • Average: Nothing all that different from most weather apps; shows temperature for example
  • Little Value:  Not sure why someone would get much out of the app

 

CUSTOMER FRIENDLINESS

Quality:  Same metric from Quality Assessment.

Privacy, TOS, Help FAQ, User Feedback:  There as all Yes / No values.  TOS stands for “Terms of Service”.  For each of these features, it’s preferred that these documents are built in natively into the application.  Some exceptions are made to qualify the feature as a “Yes” if the integration is seamless.

 

FEATURE ANALYSIS 

Quality:  Same metric from Quality Assessment.

Video Forecast, Local News, Login Ability, Save Favorites, Webcam, Push Notification:  There as all Yes / No values.  Video forecasts are full videos as opposed to Webcams which are often stationary weather cams.  Local news should have some element of weather coverage included.