Today, I was browsing my Facebook feed and saw a scary map a meteorologist friend posted around the Chicago area. Something about the Bears game. It got me thinking I should find out what the rest of the week's weather is going to be like. I went to the Weather Channel website (weather.com) looking for the forecast for the week.
My eyes were assailed with the following, which was what was visible above the fold.
I literally double checked the URL I typed thinking I mistype and landed on one of those domains that is being squatted by advertisers. Is this really the Weather Channel website? What happened??
While I realize some of the elements of the page might be overly saturated for the purposes of alerting people to really alarming situations with regard to the tornado and the typhoon, there are several major issues with what I'm seeing.
1) While I understand alerts are necessary, neither of the red highlighted issues (tornado and typhoon) are anywhere near the 3 locations I have saved previously nor my current location if the website is doing any IP detecting, therefore these alerts are NOT immediately relevant and do not deserve such high alarm status
2) I know everyone has jumped on the minimalist bandwagon between Metro / Win 8 and iOS 7. But it doesn't mean it is good design to just use the colors that they are using! That medium blue color being used in the top bar is now pervasive in lots of applications. It's a color that "vibrates" and causes strain on my eyes. It doesn't provide sufficient contrast against white text or as text color on white background. It probably doesn't work with black that well either. It is in the middle and that's usually bad. I wanted to make sure this isn't just personal opinion so I went to photoshop and put the screenshot through the two red-green colorblindness filters and got the following.
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| Photoshop Deuteranopia Filter (Red-Green Colorblindness) |
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| Photoshop Protanopia Filter (Red-Green Colorblindness) |
No question, that blue provides horrible contrast and should not be perpetuated! Look at how well the original Weather Channel logo blue is providing contrast.
3) The unlabeled "blocks" right in the center beneath the top banner area has 4 highlight stories (I presume, there's no label). And between "You Won't Believe What Bit Her!" and "Rare 'Unicorn' Rediscovered" and the "play" icons that look like they were either pushed onto the next line because the headline was too long, or the page didn't finish rendering and the label was missing, I was convinced that I was on an advertisement page or the Weather Channel website had been hacked. There's no way that a serious weather website would look so much like the local tabloids, right? What does either one of them have to do with weather?!
I would say the same about the "WATCH: Elk Doesn't Do Photos" caption, except that one I knew to be an actual event since I've seen that on the local news recently. But it STILL has no relation to the WEATHER.
4) There really is an ad prominently taking up about 15% of the screen and it is about shopping? For goodness sake, it would at least make more sense if it was trying to sell me a tornado survival kit!
I'm just so disheartened by the way so many major websites, programs, applications, and more has decided to just jump on the new minimalist design bandwagon and take colors directly from iOS or Win8 without thought. Everything being "flat" there's no clear hierarchy and everything is assailing your eyes the same time. Additionally, there's irrelevant content, inappropriate alerting, and much more that over stimulates the visual senses instead of keeping it simple, as originally intended by the minimalist approach.
I came looking for the weather, and I am left asking myself why didn't I just use one of my apps to get the 5 day forecast instead. It would have saved me from this.
