Talking About The Weather
We’re beyond this.
The cliche topic when talking to a stranger is to mention something about the weather. “Sure is cold out today!” or “Stay warm.” At least around Toronto, the “surprises” about the weather are predictable. It’s cold. It’s snowy. In the summer, it’s sometimes hot. Rarely, (once in 10 years) in the summer, there’ll be a tornado warning. There’s sometimes thunderstorms. For the most part, there isn’t a huge amount of variation.
As I’ve aged and played less outdoors, the weather has had less of an impact on my schedule. OK, my commute is longer or school might be closing early. However, I usually wear the same thing regardless if it’s winter or summer with small variations.
When it comes to voice interaction, weather seems to be one of the most popular requests. With the Ubi, it was the #1 question and we invested a lot of work in answering that question. However, I’m working if we’re going to go beyond that soon.
The Echo Show, Google Home Hub, Facebook Portal… all invest in showing the forecast on their main page. It gives an idea of what people might expect for the next few days.
What might be less of a cognitive load than searching by voice for the weather would be to list out the different services and just announce extreme weather as it arrises. We’re beyond talking about the weather.
