Window on the weather: a case study in multi-platform visual communication design, with a relationship to Design Thinking

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In February 2018, after three years of design and development work, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Weather launched its redesigned service across multiple platforms. The project involved new ways of cross-disciplinary communication design working across broadcast and digital services. This research examines these innovations and considers the transcorporeality of our relationship with weather forecasting. BBC Weather developed an iconography in the mid-1970s that has been integral to its brand identity and which has survived the changes in television graphics technology from magnetised acrylic symbols to digital systems. Satellite imagery, advanced computer weather modelling, mobile interaction, and weather on the move in realtime, have become integral to presenting different layers of visual sophistication and information that require translation and editing to communicate the weather across multiple platforms and formats. An ethnographic study of the leading participants in the design project mapped out the creative process and highlighted reflexive points where design practice was modified and adapted by the interdisciplinarity of the team. Their approach to design anthropology and service design approaches are revealed in the context of Design Thinking, and how the domestication of digital services is linked to a relationship to the weather for a UK and Irish audience.