WeatherFast Demo Transcript
Kelly:
Hello everyone, this is Kelly Ford and I wanted to give a short demonstration of an app I've created called WeatherFast. Now I know there's all sorts of apps out there to do the weather and I'm not trying to be the end-all and be all of weather apps, but some of my goals for this project were to make an app that was working well with voiceover and that tried to provide information in ways that was convenient to read and in some cases hard to get from traditional weather apps. So I'm going to launch the app. It's available in the Apple App Store under the name WeatherFast. And also newer versions are released on TestFlight. Now, when the app opens, you land on, obviously, what I call the cities list. And we'll start there.
VoiceOver:
Wisconsin, 20, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, San Diego, California, Madison, Wisconsin, 21 degrees F. blizzard warning, moderate snowfall, 3 degrees F. Northwest, 29 mph, 3.7 in, 25 degrees F, 13 degrees F. Button, actions available.
Kelly:
Now, there's a lot already there. So you can hear we're in Madison, Wisconsin. A lot of different information being communicated with not necessarily qualifiers in front of it, but by that I mean you don't necessarily know what each number means. There is a setting that I'll show later that allows you to put the header words in front of each of these things. But one of my philosophies is once you've kind of heard everything a few times, you kind of know the order. Fairly straightforward. I've added, the app comes with two cities by default, just so you can see how it works. Madison, Wisconsin, where we have a blizzard, and then, San.
VoiceOver:
Diego, California, 55 degrees F, heat advisory plus one, clear sky, 54 degrees F, end, 5 mph, 84 degrees F, 55 degrees F, button, actions available.
Kelly:
Kind of ironic that San Diego has a heat advisory. And we could continue just swiping through cities.
VoiceOver:
Wisconsin, 19 degrees F. Snowfall 3 degrees F. Northwest, 25 mph, 4.3 and 25 degrees F. 11 degrees F. Button. Actions available.
Kelly:
And you keep hearing the voice over saying actions available. I make extensive use of actions in the app.
VoiceOver:
Madison, Wisconsin. One of my favorite is 29 mph, 3.7 and I'm going to swipe up. Next day.
Kelly:
And I can go to next day. And in effect, the app time shifts to the next day so that everything that you're experiencing, the hourly, the weather is the next day.
VoiceOver:
Human weather for tomorrow, Madison, Wisconsin, loading. Button, Madison, Wisconsin, 11 degrees F, moderate snowfall, 11 degrees F, 18 mph, 0.1 in 18 degrees F, 3 degrees F, button.
Kelly:
So that would be what's happening tomorrow in Madison. And then every city on this list, is going to show you the weather at the time of day that it is tomorrow. We can use the action to go back to the previous day, which would be today. If we go up to the top, there are buttons for doing the same thing previous day.
VoiceOver:
Currently doing today. Button. Next day. But weather fast. Heading. Add city. Button.
Kelly:
And we might as well look at add city next.
VoiceOver:
Add city heading. Cancel button. Add city heading. Enter a city name or zip code. Use my current location button.
Kelly:
So if you activate use my current location, like most apps, it's going to ask for permission and then it will try and find your city.
VoiceOver:
City search field. City name or zip code. Text field. City search field. Text field. Is editing. City name or zip code. Insertion point at start.
Kelly:
Now one thing I do that's a little bit different than a lot of apps when you're searching is I don't rattle off how many things were found on each character. I find that very difficult to use, but I'm going to put in an old zip code of mine. And then?
VoiceOver:
City search field, text field, is editing, 98,052, search button.
Kelly:
I could say search and more will happen.
VoiceOver:
Examples, San Diego, California, Redmond, Washington, United States, coordinates 47.603-122.1255, button.
Kelly:
Now, one search result is always shown by default when it's found, so I don't have to say search. I can double tap on this.
VoiceOver:
Redmond, Watch, Media State, button. And now we're going to have a.
Kelly:
Lot of cities in here right now.
VoiceOver:
Wisconsin, Redmond, Washington, 44 degrees F, overcast, 40 degrees F, SE, 3 mph, 0.4 in, 57 degrees F, 43 degrees F, button. Action available.
Kelly:
And now Redmond's been added.
VoiceOver:
Washington, 44 degrees F, hydrologic outlook, overcast, 40 degrees, tab bar, selected, Redmond, Washington, 44 degrees F, hydrologic outlook, overcast, 40 degrees F, SE, 3 mph, 0.
Kelly:
Now you'll notice something that happened there was it red rendered once and then it popped up. If there's a weather alert, the first time I added a city, it still needed to look it up. But there must be some sort of rain warning there. We could go into Redmond and see what that is. Let's say all of a sudden, Redmond was really important to me.
VoiceOver:
Previous day, next day, delete, remove, move up, move down, move the top, move the bottom.
Kelly:
So I can rearrange the list again with actions.
VoiceOver:
Move the top, move Redmond, Washington to the top of list, Chapea Falls, Wisconsin, 14 degrees F, hydrologic outlook, overcast, dash 1 degrees F, Northwest.
Kelly:
And so that's one way to add cities. The other feature we have is browse. So I've double tapped on browse.
VoiceOver:
Settings, tab, settings, browse cities, headings selected, it's international, select a state, choose a state, button.
Kelly:
So I'm going to pick a state by double tapping.
VoiceOver:
Delaware, button, Florida, Georgia, button, page 24, page 34, Florida, button. North Carolina button, New York button, New Mexico, New Jersey button, New Hampshire button, Nevada button, H2O4, Massachusetts button, Maryland button, Maine button, Louisiana button.
Kelly:
Let's pick a state like Louisiana.
VoiceOver:
Sort cities, current source, name AZ, button.
Kelly:
Now the app comes populated with... about 150 cities per US state, and we'll talk about international countries, and it's about 50 cities per international country. And you heard it say sort, alphabetical. So we could start swiping through these. So now we can kind of get an idea of what's going on in a state.
VoiceOver:
Louisiana, 46 degrees have overcast. Addis Louisiana, 46 degrees have overcast. Button, add to my cities.
Kelly:
And then again, you could double tap on this to go into a city or use the action to add to your cities.
VoiceOver:
One of the interesting things though...
Kelly:
So we have sorting right now it's name AZ. So that's fairly straightforward. We also have what I call geographic sort. So looking at a weather map is kind of hard if you use VoiceOver. So this is 1 attempt to try and do something similar to that. So this, you can sort by the four directions, north to south, south to north, east to west, or west to east. We'll say north to south. Now what this does is it presents all the cities based on their geographic location, the northernmost city, and then it just keeps going south. The one thing to be aware of is 2 cities that are in the north could be on opposite sides of the state. So you could bounce back and forth east to west a little bit as you're moving south.
VoiceOver:
Louisiana, heading. Search cities in Louisiana, selected. United States, international, button, selected states. Haynesville, Louisiana, 35 degrees out, clear sky, button. Vivian, Louisiana, 35 degrees out, clear sky, button.
Kelly:
So I'm just kind of stepping through these.
VoiceOver:
Louisiana, 38 degrees of overcast. Button. Actions available. Sort cities. Current sort. North to South. Button. Louisiana. Search cities in Louisiana. Selected. United States.
Kelly:
And that's fairly straightforward. We can also pick countries.
VoiceOver:
International. Select a state. International. Button. Two of two. Selected. International. Two of two. Select a country. Choose a country. Button. One 100. Choose a country. Button.
Kelly:
Double tapping.
VoiceOver:
Australia. Button. Austria, but page 2 of page 3 of page 4 of 14. Ecuador, button. Egypt, but page 5 of page 6 of page 7 of 14. Kuwait, button. Progistan, button. Page 84, page 94, Namibia, button. Nepal, button. Netherlands, button. New Zealand, button. Page 10 of 14. Fairway, button. Peru, button. Philippines, button. Poland, button. Portugal, button. Qatar, button. Republic of the Congo, button. Romania, button. Russia, button. Rwanda, button. St. Louisia, button. Samoa, button. San Marino, button. Saudi Arabia, button. Senegal, button. Serbia, button. Page 12 of 14. Spain, button. Sri Lanka, button. Sudan, button.
Kelly:
So really just a lot of different cities.
VoiceOver:
Togo, Tonga, Prinad and Tobato, button. Tunisia, button. Turkey, button. For medicine, button. Uganda, button. Ukraine, button. United Arab members, button. United Kingdom, button.
Kelly:
We'll go to the United Kingdom.
VoiceOver:
Sort cities, current source, name, AZ, button.
Kelly:
And then?
VoiceOver:
Northern Ireland, 49 degrees out, overcast. Birmingham, England, 49 degrees out, overcast. Button, actions available. Bradford, Brighton, England, 52 degrees out, overcast. Button, actions available.
Kelly:
So now we have a city like Brighton, England, or any one of these. And again, you can add these to your list. I'm going to go back to my cities.
VoiceOver:
Tap bar. Tap bar. Brighton, England, 52 degrees out, overcast. Tap bar. My cities. Tap. Green Bay, Wisconsin, 20 degrees Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, San Diego, California, Madison, Wisconsin, 21 degrees F.
Kelly:
Let's activate Madison, Wisconsin, and kind of get an idea of the sorts of things that are available there.
VoiceOver:
Conditions, moderate snowfall, weather fast, back button, Madison, Wisconsin, heading.
Kelly:
I'm just swiping forward.
VoiceOver:
Current temperature 21 degrees F. Conditions, moderate snowfall. Field like 3 degrees F.
Kelly:
So here we have an actions menu, which with some other features that you can use in the app. We'll come back to those, but there's historical weather, weather around me, and expected precipitation.
VoiceOver:
Weather alert heading. Extreme alert. Blizzard warning button.
Kelly:
So here we have a weather alert of extreme alert blizzard. We can activate that. in the U.S. from the National Weather Service, internationally weather available from Apple's weather kit. We could read those.
VoiceOver:
Button. Extreme severity. Heading. Blizzard warning. Heading. Blizzard warning. March 16th at 7:15 AM CDT until March 16th at 4:00 PM CDT by NWS Waukee, Wisconsin. Details. Heading. Ellipsis. Blizzard conditions will continue this morning. Ellipsis. Blizzard conditions will continue this morning. Snowfall and wind gusts from 40 to 45 mph.
Kelly:
We're not having exactly great weather today.
VoiceOver:
Weather alert. Heading. Done. Button. Action menu, button, weather alerts, heading. Extreme alert, blizzard warning, today's forecast, heading.
Kelly:
Then we get some of the forecast details for today.
VoiceOver:
Conditions, heavy snowfall. Temperature, low 13 degrees F, high 25 degrees F, 95 percent.
Kelly:
So we're supposed to get, a bunch of snow still today?
VoiceOver:
A lot of.
Kelly:
That's fairly straightforward.
VoiceOver:
And then we can navigate by heading astronomy.
Kelly:
Astronomy is really the moon. A little bit more about current conditions.
VoiceOver:
And.
Kelly:
Then the 24-hour forecast. And again, next heading, 16 days. Now, Madison's in the middle of the US, so the marine forecast here is just going to be a bunch of times. I need to add another function in the app to only show the marine forecast when there is actually one.
VoiceOver:
Location heading heading not found.
Kelly:
So you can get all of this information. Let's go back and look at a couple of interesting features.
VoiceOver:
Go to the actions. Refresh weather button. New historical weather button.
Kelly:
Expected precipitation.
VoiceOver:
Weather around me button.
Kelly:
So weather around me is one of the features I like.
VoiceOver:
Weather around me heading.
Kelly:
So this has really. three things that are happening. First, you can set the distance. Imagine that your city is kind of at the center of a circle. You can say, how big should that circle be? And then everything in here is based off of dividing that circle into eight parts and directions, north, northeast. And as you move further out from that circle, that cone for each section kind of expands. So right now we're looking at 150 miles.
VoiceOver:
Your location, Madison, 21 degrees out, moderate snowfall, heading. Regional summary, colder to the southwest, west, northwest. Precipitation to the north, northeast, east, south. Heading.
Kelly:
So first, the app tries to give you a regional summary of what's happening in those areas. Next, it's going to pick one city at the distance that it can find that you set in each direction and tell you what's happening.
VoiceOver:
Surrounding areas, surrounding areas, heading north near Wisconsin, 150 miles, 14 degrees F, moderate snowfall. Button. Northeast, near Liberty, Wisconsin, 185 miles, 20 degrees F, every snowfall. Button. East, near Wisconsin, 110 miles, 26 degrees F, every snowfall. Southeast, near in 187 miles, 27 degrees F, overcast. Button.
Kelly:
One thing to understand, you'll be like, well, why I said 150 and why is the app currently picking 187 in some cases? In order for some of these features to work, the app, as I said, comes pre-loaded with a whole bunch of cities. Looking all of these cities up on the fly would be kind of slow.
VoiceOver:
You can keep going through this.
Kelly:
But then we also have what I call explore direction. Now you can pick any direction. and step through just cities in that direction.
VoiceOver:
Northeast. East.
Kelly:
So we will go Southeast.
VoiceOver:
South.
Kelly:
South of Madison and kind of get an idea where it might be starting to get a little bit warmer.
VoiceOver:
Good explorer, Fitchburg, Wisconsin, 21 degrees out, moderate snowfall, 5 miles, one of nine, adjustable. Oregon, Wisconsin, 21 degrees out, moderate snowfall, 10 miles, two of nine. Evansville, Wisconsin, 20 degrees out, moderate snowfall, 21 miles, 3 of 9. Monroe, Wisconsin, 20 degrees out, moderate snowfall, 35 miles, 4 of 9. Majesney Park, Illinois, 22 degrees F, moderate snowfall, 53 miles, 5 of 9. Freeport, Illinois, 22 degrees F, moderate snowfall, 55 miles, 6 of 9.
Kelly:
And so we can go through all of these cities.
VoiceOver:
Love Park, Illinois, 22 degrees F, moderate snowfall, 55 miles, 7 of 9.
Kelly:
And then if we swipe again from this city list, this direction of cities, we can double tap on full detail and go to that city. We're going to exit this. As I said, there are two other features you can explore here. Historical weather, the app can go back in many cases 80 years and you can pick a date or browse a 30 day period of time. and kind of get an idea of what the weather was on a certain day. So when you always say, oh, I remember it was different when I was a kid, you can go back and check that out. The other important thing in this app is...
VoiceOver:
Tap art, tap art, tap art, tap art, 11 hours 57, tap art, settings.
Kelly:
Settings, there's an awful lot of settings you can customize.
VoiceOver:
Edit, button, settings.
Kelly:
First, how do you want the app to communicate?
VoiceOver:
We have units, temperature, right?
Kelly:
Fahrenheit, Celsius. All these are fairly straightforward, but you can customize them. So let's move past this. So here again, that feed drive was just showing you weather around me, the default distance.
VoiceOver:
When you use the browse feature, how do you want your city sorted? Features, heading, expected precipitation, switch button on.
Kelly:
If you really don't want some of the features on, you can turn them off.
VoiceOver:
Weather around me, switch button on. International weather alerts, switch button on. Enable or disable app features. Display options, heading.
Kelly:
This is probably most interesting for voiceover users.
VoiceOver:
New mode, list, new mode, currently list, button, pop up button.
Kelly:
This says view mode, and this refers to your city list. And right now it's set to list. That means that you get that view where all the numbers were combined into a single object. If you would prefer to step through items individually for each city, you can change this to flat.
VoiceOver:
Flat, button, selected, list, flat, button, flat. New mode, flat, new mode, flat bar, flat bar. Tap bar, tap bar, new mode, flat, new mode, tap bar, browse, tap, my cities, tap.
Kelly:
Now if we go back to my cities.
VoiceOver:
Actions menu, button, pop-up button, weather fast, back button.
Kelly:
And back to the city list.
VoiceOver:
Green estate, rain, 0.4 in. At wind speed, 3 miles characters.
Kelly:
And we'll change to heading navigation.
VoiceOver:
On, hit, screen recognition, headings. Redmond, Washington, 44 degrees F, heading.
Kelly:
Now if we swipe.
VoiceOver:
Temperature, 44 degrees F. Actions await, conditions, overcast. Actions available. Field light, 40 degrees F. Actions available.
Kelly:
Each thing is kind of broken up.
VoiceOver:
Next day. Previous day, wide direction. SE 135, wind speed, 3 mph. Tap bar, browse, tap, two or three.
Kelly:
If we also have the kind of middle ground.
VoiceOver:
Birmingham, England, 49 degrees F, overcast, tap bar, tap bar, tap bar, settings.
Kelly:
We'll go back to settings.
VoiceOver:
Weather around me, switch button, on. International weather alerts, enable disable app features, display options. Heading, new mode, flat, new mode.
Kelly:
We're going to change it back to list.
VoiceOver:
Flat, list, button. New mode, list, new mode, currently list, button, list content display, condensed, list content display.
Kelly:
And now we have the setting that says list content display. And right now it says condensed. That is my way of saying, hey, I don't want all the header words, but we can change that.
VoiceOver:
Selected, condensed, button, details, button.
Kelly:
To details.
VoiceOver:
Settings, heading. Tap bar, tap bar, tap bar. My cities, tap, 103. Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, 19 degrees F, alert. San Diego, Madison, Wisconsin, 21 degrees F, alert. Blizzard warning conditions, moderate snowfall, field light, 3 degrees F, wind direction, northwest, wind speed, 29 miles per hour, snow, 3.7 in high, 25 degrees F, low, 13 degrees F, button, actions available.
Kelly:
So you'll notice with that details option turned on, each number that you hear is prefaced by its explanation of what it is. Let's go back to settings.
VoiceOver:
Tab bar, tap bar, tap bar, settings, tab, display options, heading, view mode, list content display, city list view, heading, list content display, details, list content display, condensed, button, condensed, view, list content display, city list view.
Kelly:
In these settings, you can also configure all kinds of information, like what's in the... each section, you can reorder the sections. Couple last things to show.
VoiceOver:
App bar, my cities, vertical scroll bar, 9 page, developer settings, button.
Kelly:
There is a full user guide here near the bottom of the settings page that you can get to. And then as I'm working on some features, so Apple already has their test flight, and I use that a lot for new features, but sometimes I still want to have a little more control. For example, I talked about two display modes, both list and flat. Well, I'm a big fan of tables, and in my experience, getting tables to work in iOS apps these days, not talking about web tables, but within an app, at least it's been complicated for a lot of other apps I've used. So I've added a table view that actually works with VoiceOver. And if we go into developer settings... So here we have a section called My Data. If you want to turn this on and use this pretty much any data that I can get from the weather API, you can configure a section with it. And there's hundreds of data points. Here's something I just added because the original weather service I was using, OpenMateo, which is great. It's snow totals, I've learned, can be a little bit off in certain areas. So I'm using Apple Weather Kit for snow totals. And that's a feature that I turned on, but again, it's still under developer settings.
VoiceOver:
Enable table view user toggle. Switch button off.
Kelly:
So here's the item I was talking about, enable table view. We're going to turn this on.
VoiceOver:
My data, heading, developer settings, heading, done, button of your display options, heading, new mode, list, view mode, list content display, new mode, list, new mode, currently flat, button, selected, list, table, button.
Kelly:
And so here we have table.
VoiceOver:
Table. Settings, heading, tab bar, tab bar, tab bar, my cities, tab.
Kelly:
And now if we go back to the city list.
VoiceOver:
20 degrees F, row 7, characters, actions, activate rows.
Kelly:
And we change voice over to rows.
VoiceOver:
Wisconsin, 19 degrees F. Row 6, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, San Diego, California, 54 degrees F. Row 4.
Kelly:
We can just go down one, down a column.
VoiceOver:
Madison, Wisconsin, 21 degrees F. Row 3. Conditions, moderate snowfall, column 3. At San Diego, California. Clear sky, row 4, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Moderate snowfall, row 5, De Pere, Wisconsin. Heavy snowfall, row 6.
Kelly:
In many cases, you wouldn't want just the one piece of information, but maybe you do, and so you just want to know the temperatures or the current conditions.
VoiceOver:
So this is just another way to get at that information.
Kelly:
This is a short but longer than I thought demo of weather app, so hopefully you find it of interest and give it a try.