Design infographic-style representation of a Snow Forecast

Starski

Starski publish various winter sports websites including snowboard-review.com.

We are building a new complementary website that offers users snow forecasts for each ski resort.

End users will be 18-50 something men and women, generally affluent. We do not want to appeal to the "coolness" of snowboarding, but want the design to be modern, funky and fresh.

We want to make our representation of the weather very visually appealing for each ski resort location, and are hence asking for the resort weather forecast to be illustrated, rather than asking for a "webpage" and starting from that predefined position. We will then take this work forward and build a website around the concept.

http://beadhoney.co.uk/snow-forecast/avoriaz

You can see above all the data points we have for each day for a sample resort, and we want to represent that visually, rather than just show a page of data. We envisage it will be in the style of an infographic, or like the Yahoo Weather app (in the overall concept of representing data visually, do not use the same exact style).

• We want bold, bright colours, and a design that makes an impact. Somewhere between cartoony and contemporary.
• We don't want to use characters or mascots etc, but it should have a recognisable element.
• We'd like to create an instant affinity between the "good" (a large dump of snow) so that on seeing our representation of it, it is instantly recognisable and associated with a good feeling.

COLOURS:
Being a winter sports website we'd expect a range of blues and white as the primary colours but we are open to interpretation.

We anticipate a design that occupies a rectangular space, but one which is transferrable to a portrait space (e.g. smartphone).

The key data to show, is the chance and level of snow overall for the day. This should be front and center and emphasised.

Next would be the actual weather data (wind, temps, etc) - if there is zero snow fall, but it's sunny (or, more accurately) there is a high chance of sunshine), we still want to show that, but the fact there is zero chance of snow and zero snowfall in cm/inches expected.

This piece will be key, as while there are detailed weather codes for each 3 hour interval (see link below), there is no overall state for the day so this could be approximated for the day overall (75% chance of sunshine and 50% chance of cloud would be "Sunny with cloudy spells") however we want to show morning/lunch/afternoon taking 10am, 1pm and 4pm as the reference points and showing all relevant points.

http://www.worldweatheronline.com/f…nCodes.txt

Then astronomy for the day, again in visuals.

In my mind, I imagine some form of vertical sliding scale to illustrate the snow levels forecast, where there the illustration conveys the rising scale of "excitement" as the level rises, rather than simple having a longer bar, or 10cm rising to 20cm etc.

In the finished product, we'd expect to show detailed weather and time interval data via a click to a dedicated page or reveal/expand action (every 3 hours) so it is something to bear in mind.

I anticipate that the resulting design will be made to account for all the relevant permutations (e.g. if some approximation of a bar chart is used for one of the metrics, we'd need to show it at 10%, 30% 75% etc).

It is not strictly required, but encapsulating the design around navigation that would be used to allow a user to see more detailed information, or the history of the last 7 days (as an alternative to the forecast) would be welcome.

EDIT 15th June - 11:02 GMT - PLEASE SEE THE FOLLOWING REVISION BASED ON FEEDBACK:

Don't think about it as designing a list of icons - we want a concept, that can be extended to include all permutations with in the later stages, when we build it out into a design on the web.

We get all the icons/weather codes back from the site, but we are only really interested in:

Rain
Snow
Sun
Wind
Thunder
Cloud

We could always add 100 or 250 different types in a later release, but for now, the above would be fine.

It could be sunny and cloudy, but it's up to you if you want to show a combined sunny/loud icon, or both the sun and the cloud icon separately. Same if you want to use icons and words etc.

Essentially, for the purpose of getting into the final round and winning, we want to see a concept, that shows how you'd illustrate the required weather view a user would see based on the important information:

Snow chance and level forecast for the day.

Wind, temperatures & overall weather for 3 time points in the day.

You can think of it as a triangle (the main event of snow above 3 times of the day), but I don't want to be too prescriptive. When running similar contests I get designers who are happy to take direction, and others who don't want to be told what to do and do not think it is a collaborative process so I am trying to take a middle approach.

I want to make the snow forecast front and center, and then give weather for 3 intervals in the day. I am not interested in the night weather - times are 10am, 1pm and 4pm which will always be day time and the overall weather for the day will be a 24 hour view which is ambiguous to the time of day. We are tailoring for a skier, who is interested in how much snow is going to fall over the next 24 hours, and the weather conditions during daytime hours.

I don't want to replace cm with happiness, but rather I want the user to feel happy when they see a large forecast of snow.

Here are some example designs we like:

http://thumb7.shutterstock.com/disp…514355.jpg
http://www.underconsideration.com/b…ration.png
http://cache1.asset-cache.net/xc/46…lbHdgvzK30
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.co…25737f.jpg
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/illu…974502.jpg
http://weandthecolor.com/wp-content…raphic.jpg
https://d3ui957tjb5bqd.cloudfront.n…1381016101
http://weandthecolor.com/wp-content…aphics.jpg
http://www.sounasdesign.com/wp-cont…sounas.jpg
https://d3ui957tjb5bqd.cloudfront.n…1365055351
http://previews.123rf.com/images/kc…Vector.jpg
http://previews.123rf.com/images/a7…Vector.jpg
http://www.partfaliaz.com/wp-conten…rator3.jpg
http://www.partfaliaz.com/wp-conten…trator.jpg
http://thumb101.shutterstock.com/di…636637.jpg
http://image.shutterstock.com/displ…068186.jpg