Automotive / Accuweather

Transforming the Driving Experience With First of Its Kind In-Car Weather App

Founded in 1962, AccuWeather has introduced a number of award-winning weather apps that provide users with realtime, accurate, and hyper-local weather information. Recently they signed a partnership agreement with a Swedish automotive brand to create the default weather app for all electric vehicles on Android Automotive OS (AAOS).AccuWeather has introduced a number of award-winning weather apps and recently they signed a partnership agreement with a Swedish automotive brand to create the default weather app for all electric vehicles on Android Automotive OS (AAOS).

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CHALLENGE

AccuWeather needed a partner capable of building an application that translated their innovative digital strategy and featured a user experience optimized for driver safety. Upon starting the project, we identified strict AAOS guidelines set by Google that were placed at the forefront of all design and development work.

Key results

Embedded in 65,000 vehicles in 2022

Projected 290,000 vehicles per year by 2025

Collaborating with Google to explore user experience improvements

SOLUTION

Impressed with our work in the connected vehicle space, AccuWeather recruited TribalScale to build an MVP application. TribalScale’s mission to “Right the Future” and cross-functional team with Android expertise made us the perfect partner.

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
After collaborating with AccuWeather to assess product needs and outline features, our product team then confirmed feasibility with our engineers and Google representatives.

DESIGN
Our design team carried out extensive research on the technology and use cases to fully understand the constraints of the new platform. From there, they were able to create solutions using templates from Google’s Car App library while also advocating for usability every step of the way.

DEVELOPMENT
TribalScale’s Android-specialized engineering team had the necessary expertise to build out this new app in the AAOS ecosystem. They conducted thorough research on the implementation of AAOS within the guidelines provided by Google and successfully integrated their findings into the app.

QA
Our QA engineers conducted essential testing on a head unit to emulate the software functionalities, and used peripheral apps to ensure all inputs produced the appropriate in-vehicle output from end-to-end.

Technologies

Kotlin
Android SDK
Coroutines
Android Car App Library
Accuweather SDK

OUTCOME

In the new app, drivers can complete the following directly from the screen of the infotainment platform built into the electric vehicles:

View current weather information, as well as forecasts for the next five hours and next five days.
View weather alerts for their set location.
Search for weather information by location.
Access app settings.

All new electric vehicles produced by the Swedish automotive brand will include the app, with 65,000 vehicles projected to sell in 2022, increasing by tenfold to 290,000 by 2025.

Established as AAOS experts, TribalScale’s next steps are to continue building in this ecosystem and to work with Google to improve the user experience permitted by AAOS guidelines. We are encouraged by the recent addition of our feature requests to the AAOS product roadmap.

We have leveraged our world-class weather data, in partnership with Tribalscale, to deliver a highly innovative and first-of-its-kind integration to the electric vehicle space. Our collaboration is the first step in ensuring drivers have every tool at their disposal to be safer and better prepared for all weather conditions.”