Cloudy with a Chance of Wrong

Despite Apple’s well-earned reputation for design excellence, its Weather app too often undermines user trust with misleading forecasts.

Have you noticed how often it gets the week’s weather forecast wrong? Last week’s forecast for the Philadelphia area looked very similar to the one pictured above, yet it turned out to be a mostly sunny week, punctuated with periodic showers in the late-afternoon or evening. Apparently, It’s Sometimes Sunny in Philadelphia, but not according to Apple.

This week’s forecast looks similar, but let’s drill down into the near-term forecast, the one that should be most accurate (albeit imperfect by nature). Today's and Tuesday’s weather look similar, with Tuesday’s marginally worse, right? But when we click on each day’s forecast, a different picture emerges:

• Monday indeed shows a 75% chance of thunderstorms by the late-afternoon / evening.

• Tuesday, however, shows an 80% chance of thunderstorms, even though the accompanying graph peaks at around 45% shortly after midnight, and less than 20% for the daylight hours. In short, a fundamentally different and less rainy day. How on earth does any of this add up to an 80% chance?

This article isn't just about the weather—it's about trust, communication, and how bad UI (the User Interface or look and feel of a digital product) and UX (the User Experience) can erode customer confidence.

The goal with any forecast – in weather or business – is to be directionally correct, even if it turns out precisely wrong. Apple’s weather icons flip that script; often directionally incorrect in seeking to be precisely right at some point. If there’s a 15% chance of rain in even one of the next 24 hours, the icon for the entire day will show rain. Is that really the most effective way to communicate what’s likely to transpire?

How many thousands of people and millions of events are being re-scheduled or cancelled because of misleading forecasts? Construction, landscaping and other outdoor work? Camping trips, golf games, play dates at the local pool, walks around the neighborhood and other leisure activities?

As someone who works with numbers and words, I sub-contract design work for my clients to commercial artists, but even I can think of a better way to solve this. For example, by using split- or dual-icons, one half of which shows the day’s summary, the other what might also occur (e.g., Mostly Sunny / Some Showers)? In this way, they could help their customers discern signal from noise – instead of blurring the line.

For Apple, the company that launched a thousand emojis – most of them seldom used – this should be an easy solve.

What does this have to do with someone who works at the intersection of marketing, consulting, and M&A? Having found many new customers for my clients, I can spot customer obsession from a mile away. When you confuse or dissatisfy customers, they don’t always complain in public, as I’m doing here. Rather than giving you the gift of feedback, they’re more likely to be quiet and simply lose trust in what you have to say or even mock it. My tennis friends and I now openly joke that tomorrow's weather will be whatever our iPhones say it isn’t.

Mother Nature is fickle, and predictions are hard, especially those about the future (as a sports coach once quipped). But uncertainty can be communicated effectively. What problems do you have in your business that can be solved through better communications and expectation-setting among your customers? Let’s chat.