Japan Weather Research
Moved onto the International Product Team for The Weather Company, my team was tasked with increasing the audience in Japan. Not having any familiarity with Japan, I dove into action finding every piece of information I could get my hands on.
Needing a voice on the ground there, I found that we had a Japanese Weather Company office in Tokyo. Doing some digging internally, I was able to forge a relationship AND a team willing to help conduct research and testing on the ground there. I put a business case together to travel to Japan to see these plans through - BOOM, I was off!
The relationships and research plan were key to my success in gathering qualitative discovery insights in Japan and quantitative insights utilizing our Japanese counterparts.
My role
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Understand The Weather Company user discovery goals
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Collaborate with research team for discovery plan
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Gather and conduct user interviews with people in or from Japan
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Create relationship with Japanese Weather counterparts
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Conduct on-the-ground discovery and user testing
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Document and present actionable findings
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Conduct design thinking workshops as a result of research findings
iOS users were used in gathering survey data
iOS
Japan Research process
For The people of Japan
How do we improve the overall weather experience tailored to our existing and future Japanese audience?
How can we provide people in Japan a weather app that feels local and made for them?
Competitive weather market
Competitive research was completed before and during the time in Japan
Television
# 1 way people get their weather information
Mobile Apps
Very robust app landscape with Yahoo being the top weather app
Enviromental / Google
Weather information is integrated into everyday life - If weather can't be found, it will be Googled
Japan Weather Interviews
These interviews were conducted before travel to Japan to help with testing assumptions and discovery planning
1
Japan meteorologist was interviewed
8
People interviewed total. Some live in Japan, others originally from there
4&4
Females and males were interviewed
While In Japan
100+k
Total steps taken during my visit in Japan
16
People participated in user testing the new Weather Channel App designs
25
People interviewed on the street
2+2
2 cities (Kyoto and Tokyo) with 2 types of weather conditions
Why Japan?
6th largest country in total app downloads* with over 20M Weather Downloads in 2017 (11.2M iOS/9.3 Android)
We currently have 3.6M MAUs with the potential to reach their current population of over 126 Million
Users already show a high propensity to use multiple apps on a regular basis to get the weather & related info they need. We have an opportunity to provide a comprehensive experience.
ARPU $0.60/apps, $0.14/web, $0.07 mobile
For The Weather company
Greater user understanding - easier to use data visualizations
Assurance - AI providing contextualized narratives that are distilled. Proactive weather notifications, when the weather is going to change. Real-time-rain notifications, lightning notifications, flux alerts
No Place On Earth Has Better Weather! *Forecast Watch says so!
Japan Qualtrics Surveys
We ran a Qualtrics survey on our iOS app around weather accuracy. This was done as a result to the feedback received in interviews conducted before Japan travel
*Only 136 people responded, meaning this information is not statistically significant