SURFER Forecast

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Bummed that Swellwatch is gone and this is the replacement. It’s way more complex to use while being wholly less useful, and the whole “separate report for each spot thing” does little to give you an overall view of what the swell is doing. In Swellwatch you could see charts for a larger region, not just a particular spot, which made it easier to make decisions on where to surf because you could get a general idea of the swells size, direction, etc and the models were relatively consistent and accurate. With this new system swell sizes vary so much from spot to spot without that variance being reflected in the actual conditions of the surf. The written reports were great too in Swellwatch and between those and the charts it was pretty easy to get a good and reliable forecast. It’s a free service and we took Swellwatch for granted I guess, but it would be nice to have something comparable in its place. Hope that the updates make some improvements!

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You bummed out a ton of surfers by removing the original wetsand/swell watch wave animation. That forecast was so simple and accurate that we didn’t need Surfline or others. If you felt the need to create an app you could have left the original wetsand site in place or at least created the app to mirror the site - the current wind animation is pointless and your app is overly complicated. Read the book ‘inspired’ - it’s about product design which starts with the customer. Nobody is asking you to add new features which seems to be your response to the negative feedback. They are telling you exactly what to do if you want to create an app that surfers will use. If you really cared, you would scrap what you’ve done and start over (never easy to do when you’ve already invested time, resources and have some ego attached). You would use the the original wetsand site as inspiration (based on comments everyone loved that site) get a focus group of customers/surfers and determine any areas for improvement from the original site. Then, create some design mockups - I use sketch or balsamic and work with a designer/artist. Demo the mockups to your focus group then begin app creation after you receive positive feedback. Frequently validate your apps features and usability with the focus group before publishing. Rock on guys and hope you’re catching some waves during these times!

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I used swellwatch 3D for close to 20 years, I mostly used it for the swell and wind models and found them to be the best tool for my needs. I do a lot more than just surf in the ocean and utilize the whole shoreline not just the handful of surf spots on my island... I’ve given this new APP a couple months of trying to like it and think some of the features would be useful for some users however I find myself just not knowing information now that used to be easy to have. Very disappointed that swellwatch 3D got taken offline for this new “crAPP” not sure why we couldn’t have had both or have the swell and wind models on the APP. I miss how easy, fast and clear it was to get a broad overview or location specific information of what the ocean and weather are doing. I will keep this APP just in hopes that changes are made but I struggle to find it very useful to my needs and continue to mourn the death of one of my best ocean resources...

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The app falls short of the old Swellwatch website. The information is good, so are the local breaks, etc. But the lack of an animated display showing the swell, period, etc. is really annoying. With the old Swellwatch you could easily see on a map when and where the swell was coming from. With this? Only the wind. Swellwatch had the only good animated interface, and it’s gone. The devs have said that they’re going to add more features, etc. in the future, and I hope that’s one of them. This is still my favorite forecaster, but I would really love to see the features from the website return.

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This app falls very short of Swellwatch. You cannot see all the data on the screen. Instead, you have to constantly scroll up and down to view wind, swell, and tide. Also, it is clumsy with getting a weekly forecast with one look. Again you have to do a lot of scrolling and hold information in your memory. Swellwatch has everything in one model. It was easy to see swell/wind size, direction, and period for any location in one glance. Breaking the data into different bar graphs is a step backwards for Surfer swell reports.