Apple
Severe Weather Alerts & Air Quality

2020While leading Siri Weather, I delivered this feature alongside improvements to the overall domain dialogs and logic in the ever complex world of data that is Weather.

Delivering timely information based on severity and precise location.This release is the amalgamation of 3 features: the introduction of precise location, Apple acquiring Dark Sky with severe weather alert data ingestion, and integrating a 3rd party environmental intelligence platform with air quality data.

Unlike the weather app, Siri will only announce severe weather alerts when it meets a severity threshold paired with precise location. Back in 2020, designers had to write every version of voice assistant’s dialogs based on a slot-fill system.

Siri showing a frost advisory for Thunder Bay — SIRI

The Weather app showing a flash flood warning in Tokyo — SIRI

Dialog that conveys authority and trustI proposed a simple categorization across locales of 0-2. For all level 2 severity alerts, Siri will always announce with the locale’s official weather agency to convey authority and trust. The categorization system, along with precise location, creates a simple rubric to when information is shown and when they are spoken and to what detail.

Siri severe weather alert on iPhone — Level 1 severity“There is a <Frost Advisory> in your area.”Level 2 severity“The National Weather Service has issued a <hurricane warning> for <Clark county>, an <evacuation response> is <in place>. It’s forecasted for around 4pm.”

For air quality, we shipped 2 versions of the UI while Siri was transitioning from full-screen visual snippets to compact snippets. Unfortunately we did not get the P1 snippet design had wanted, but it conveyed just enough information for it to be clear and useful.

Pushing the bounds a little 🤭I had always thought it was a miss for Siri not to be able to answer specific particulate or UV index information. In 2020, there was a real tide change in America with the general population being more aware of changing weather patterns. The Weather app already ingests weather data like UV index, but there wasn’t a way for Siri to retrieve it yet.

As Siri was shifting to a more compact view and while I was still leading Siri Weather, I made sure that Siri could answer specific Weather detailed questions to future-proof users’ needs for specific weather details.

Before: Siri answering a UV index question with the general forecast — BEFORE

After: Siri answering with the UV index for Toronto — BEFORE

With quickly changing data points, heavy user usage, and the need to be laser accurate, Weather was a super fun domain to have worked on. The changes I implemented - mostly logic within dialogs - touched every device and OS.

...and Mac, Vision Pro, iPad, and CarPlay.