Weatherlist
Overview
This project began as the tumultuous 2017 hurricane season was coming to an end. The US saw record shattering destruction across Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. With billions of dollars of damage, and countless unnecessary loss of life, we began to ask:
How can we help build resiliency in flood-prone communities?
How can communities be better prepared for weather disasters?
How can we increase risk awareness?
Roles: User research, Design, Engineering
Timeline: 9 months
Team Members: Chelsea Meyers, Mike Lytle, Leon Xu
Featured on the UPenn IPD student work website
Research
We traveled to Dickinson, Texas, a suburb of Houston to find out what it was like before, during, and after Hurricane Harvey. Our team interviewed over 30 Texans impacted by the hurricane.
We walked through neighborhoods completely destroyed by flooding, took a tour of the evacuation route one survivor took as she waded waist deep in search of help, and spent hours with people in their homes listening to their stories.
We started seeing some common needs and after returning home began analysis and synthesis of all this crucial information.
Insights
People do not always heed warnings
In a place with frequent hurricanes such as Houston, people make a lot of their decisions from past occurrences. If they have never experienced personal harm from previous storms, they did not heed warnings as seriously as they could have, often resulting in under preparing or not preparing at all. We want to bring vetted information directly to people, so they trust the warnings and information they receive and take action.
A trigger is necessary to prompt preparation
We found that a trigger is necessary for people to take action. Unfortunately for some, this trigger was experienced when flood water was already entering their house. We want to move that trigger forward, giving people the opportunity to prepare. Whether that’s before hurricane season, or days before an event.
Prep takes a lot of work
Preparing for a storm does take a lot of time, effort, and work. People therefore have a desire to only prepare to a rational level. We want to make it easier for people to prepare by giving them guidance to prepare appropriately for the coming threat.
Solution
Weatherlist
Keeping our insights in mind, we developed the Weatherlist system of products which includes a physical device that communicates basic weather information in a glanceable manner; in the event of a disaster, an accompanying app shows how to prep, persevere, and recover for the severe weather event. And finally, additional subscriptions offer more personalization and include features such as document storage and delivery integration.
Weatherlist offers basic, glanceable weather information that assists the user in making daily weather related decisions, building their trust in the product.
During emergency situations such as an incoming storm, the daily information changes to show the most pertinent alerts about the weather threat. A front ring illuminates, counting down the hours before the incoming weather threat while a pulsing back light gives further cue to the imminent danger.
Weatherlist aggregates simple and inexpensive components to bring the overall cost of the device down. An LED matrix rests behind the front cover to display all of the day to day weather and emergency information, other LEDs illuminate to convey a sense of urgency, count down to the weather event, and show preparation progress.
With on board wifi, the device is easy to connect to your home network and set up with your smartphone.
The App
PREPARE
The app will count down to the event in the same way the device does and gives the user a trigger to start preparing. Lists are pre-filled with recommended actions from trusted sources like the Red Cross, appropriate to the level of threat faced.
By partnering with local hardware and grocery stores, Weatherlist can automatically identify items in the area that can be delivered to the home in 24 hours.
Families can also upload important documents like flood insurance paperwork, or pet records securely to the app ahead of time, without having to worry about losing them during the storm.
The dashboard is always there to help the family keep track of where they are in their prep process and work together to make sure they’re ready.
PERSEVERE
We also provide a set of tools for families to use during the storm, particularly in emergency situations.
Information on what shelters are nearby is crowdsourced from both families on the app as well as other grassroots efforts that occur online.
Here we curate an emergency news feed from reputable sources on the weather, emergency management, and search and rescue.
We also aggregate important local and nationwide emergency contacts so that families can find them in one place.
RECOVER
One of our biggest learnings from our research is how overwhelming the recovery process can be for a family.
Here we provide a marketplace for families to both find and provide help to one another, whether in the form of supplies, or in this case help ‘mucking’ or cleaning a house of debris to get ready for insurance adjusters and ultimately receive much needed financial help.
SHARE
The process of preparing, persevering, and recovering from a disaster is incredibly difficult, particularly when you’re on your own.
We saw many communities banding together during Harvey, and so we have also created a way for friends and neighbors to collaborate and share information. This ultimately helps create more resilient communities ready to face severe weather threats.