Week 11: Usability | Paterson

Living in Syracuse and Rhode Island, the weather is so unpredictable that I must frequently rely on Weather.com to know if I’m going to be walking in rain, snow or mist. I find this site very easy to use because the user can personalize their frequent searches.

At the very top of the site, there you can set the local weather to one area and save the page for another area; the weather for both places is just one click away. The search bar is also at the top of the page, and it remembers all of the previous searches; the links to the previous searches are extremely easy to use.

The navigation bars that list how the user wants to see the weather is what I use the most and they’re extremely self-explanatory. Weather.com uses tabs to break down the forecast into: ‘yesterday,’ ‘today,’ ‘hour-by-hour,’ ‘tomorrow,’ ‘weekend,’ ’10-day,’ ‘month,’ and the ever reliable ‘radar map.’

Although they may not always be right about the weather, The Weather Channel’s website is one of the most user-friendly sites that I use on a regular basis.