Briefly
I did this (unsolicited) redesign of the FMI Weather app as a personal project because I wanted to work on mobile application UI and because I thought the existing UI was not as good as it could be.
I have redesigned the FMI Weather app twice: first in early 2023 and again in late 2024 / early 2025.
2023 – The Initial Redesign
The thing that initially got me interested in the app was the poor user score it received on the Apple App Store at the time – 1,7 stars out of 5. The low score surprised me and made me want to take a closer look and see for myself what the problem was.
Browsing the app and taking a look at a number of reviews gave me some idea of why it was so poorly received. A couple of things stood out:
- The app looked cluttered and there was no clear visual hierarchy.
- Too much information was shown at once and the information was too detailed. It was hard to quickly form opinions and make comparisons.
- At some point, it seems there were technical issues and the app did not work as intended.
Technical issues aside, I set out to accomplish the following in the redesign:
- Rethink the visuals.
- Remove or hide superfluous content.
- Display certain things in a different way.
In the end, the biggest changes I made to the app had to do with simplifying the interface and making sure there was a clear visual hierarchy that made the interface easy to quickly understand and skim through.
2025 – The Update
I wanted to update the design because I knew it had many aspects that were lacking. The design was also missing certain things that I was planning to add later anyway. The most significant parts of the update are the following:
- Deeper thinking – I went through more reviews and read up on how weather data is collected and forecast. I suppose it should go without saying, but understanding the thing you're trying to design helps a bunch.
- Visual polish – The visuals of the original redesign were lacking here and there. I wanted to fix this in the update.
- Light mode – I didn’t include this in the original redesign but was planning to add it eventually.
- Miscellaneous – A core part of the first time user experience are the screens that welcome the user to the app, inform them about the terms of use and ask for the various permissions the app might need. I added these to the design.
An important goal for the redesign was to make the interface much easier to understand at a glance while simultaneously showing as much relevant weather data as possible.
I think I found a pretty good balance and all in all, I'm quite happy with the update.
For now at least.