Yahoo Weather literally raining cats and dogs

Weather apps are weird. When the App Store was new, it theoretically made sense to create an opinionated experience, but now that iOS is so mature, it feels natural to use the default applications provided by Apple. The app is simply too good.

However, apps like Yahoo Weather do still exist. I tried it out a few weeks ago, and there are some nice features. Unfortunately, the average photo of Costa Mesa isn’t visually appealing, so the primary screen isn’t super interesting. If I lived in, say, Santorini, I’d probably use the app daily to see beautiful photos of my hometown.

Zooming out, I wonder what it would look like if we took phrases about the weather and implanted them within the app. What would it look like to show if it’s raining cats and dogs? Alternatively, it could rain men (maybe a Tinder integration).

None of this would ever ship, though it’d be fun as a one-off push notification campaign to drive re-engagement. I came up with a bunch of other concepts for this collab with Yahoo (if I do collabs, I explicitly indicate this, like I am right now). Other ideas included a horoscope integration, betting on future weather, a dating upsell, and more. It was fun.

Tomorrow, there will be something new.

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