Rolling Out a New AviationWeather.gov: Understanding the Aviation Weather Community Across the Globe to Design, Communicate, and Transition to a Major Redesign

The Aviation Weather Center (AWC), located in Kansas City, MO, is the National Weather Service’s (NWS) national center for enroute aviation weather warnings, advisories, and forecasts. Aviation weather hazard communication is crucial to FAA decision-makers and air traffic controllers, contributing to the safety and efficiency across the National Airspace System. AWC information is also a vital safety component for the General Aviation community to maintain aviation weather awareness for flight planning and decision-making purposes. With an international mission and responsibility, AWC is also a provider of World Area Forecasts sanctioned by the International Civil Aviation Organization. AviationWeather.gov is the primary platform to communicate aviation weather information receiving over 200 million hits a day.

The NWS AWC released a major website upgrade on October 16, 2023. From the very beginning of the initial design several years ago, user engagement was the top priority to ensure usability and translation to a new style. Not only was it important to understand aviation weather community needs in the design process, but the AWC team recognized early on how vital it would be to communicate such a major change to a community that relies on seamless aviation weather hazard and warning information. To facilitate this important process of usability and input, AWC ran a new “beta” version of aviationweather.gov in parallel with the operational site for over a year to gather input and make adjustments before an official rollout. The beta version was also featured in the AWC’s Aviation Weather Testbed (AWT) experiments to ensure its operational readiness. AWT experiments include participation from the FAA Aviation Weather Demonstration and Evaluation group which is composed of social scientists with human factors expertise, a partnership that has been in existence since the inception of the AWT. As the website neared release, it took many months of preparation and organization due to the significant changes and substantial enhancements to AviationWeather.gov.

This presentation will cover a brief history behind the motivation to redesign AviationWeather.gov, driven by user feedback, and events leading up to the rollout utilizing a beta version of the website. It will also cover the development and execution of an AWC rollout communications plan to ensure an adequate “media blitz” and communication to alert partners and stakeholders of the rollout. Communication and engagement materials, for internal and external partners, included outreach flyers, talking points, tutorial videos, and social media posts. And lastly, this presentation will cover what the actual cutover experience was like, sharing best practices and lessons learned from a major website transition.