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Comment by nixpulvis

3 years ago

I'm not sure I completely see the authors point about "Preserving temperature magnitudes in ranges", could someone help me understand?

Specifically, I don't understand this: "all temperature ranges are rescaled to take up the same amount of space in the app.", since it seems like both the Dark Sky and Weather.app views use pills that don't cover the x axis, as expected.

3 comments

nixpulvis

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skadamat  3 years ago

Author here!

I think this image does the best job of showcasing the difference: https://i0.wp.com/nightingaledvs.com/wp-content/uploads/2023...

In Apple Watch, the min and max values (the numeric values left / right of the pills) are all aligned vertically on top of each other. In Dark Sky, they aren't aligned because the horizontal position is driven by the min and max values themselves. This is subtle but CRUCIAL for information graphics / software, where "glance-ability" is so so important.

  • nixpulvis  3 years ago

    Wait, where is the Apple Watch in this? You mean iOS?

    In both screenshots of that image, the horizontal position of the pills are driven by the temperature. I don't see the difference other than where the min/max label is placed.