Smart calendar for travellers

Project Overview

When traveling to different time zones with a busy meeting schedule in different cities, it can be challenging to keep your schedule organised and showing up to the right places at the right time. The design challenge is a calendar flow and interface that is smart enough to suggest meeting times, accounts for changing time zones, and is proactively working for the user to make sure they are always on time for their meetings at the right place. With a full schedule and always on the go, the user finds it difficult to manage and create new meetings on the calendar.

Key Objective

Design a calendar flow and interface that is smart enough to suggest meeting times, accounts for changing time zones, and is proactively working for the user to make sure they are always on time for their meetings. The proposed solution has to be mobile-friendly and has to use viable technologies from today.

What makes a great calendar app

Calendar apps have two core functions: They show your upcoming schedule and remind you of important events.

The app should focus on helping the user accomplish four MVP tasks:

1st: It has to be familiar to the user without a steep learning curve.

2nd: The user should be able to create and easily view scheduled meetings and be able to see what time zone the meeting is in.

3rd: The user needs a way to be able to see what time it is in different time zones to help them schedule meetings that would work for all parties.

4th: The user should have clarity about how they spend their time.

Methodology

I will refer some literature on time zones and meeting management in different time zones, so that I can make a persona that best captures my user’s need.

I will elaborate on the user’s core problems and needs to define goals. Thereafter, I will devise a framework which will result in defining the product features that achieve those goals as best as possible.

Understanding time zones

There are more than 24 time zones and a lot of confusion regarding time zones, specially since there are so many standards for it. GMT is without doubt the most well-known time zone in the world, simply because it is the reference point for all 24 of the time zones around the world. The time zones will be written in such a way that it is easy to understand by the user in whichever country she is travelling.

User profile

Before starting to flesh out ideas by sketching out interfaces, I had to summarize my understanding of the user that was illustrated in the design exercise. A travelling salesperson would be a subset group within the larger demographic of people relying on calendar in their daily lives. Basis a salesperson (i.e., Valentina), travelling through different timezones most of the time for sales and business meetings and the problems she would face, maintaining a busy meeting schedule and keeping up with her calendar to show up to the right places at the right time, I created her psychographic profile:

Pain points

Missed meetings and inconvenient meeting timing due to incorrect time calculations in different time zones.

Going back and forth from communicating over email with the client and scheduling/attending a meeting from a different app.

Keeping track of time zones between various origin, connecting and destination cities.

Faces scheduling issues as is becomes difficult to keep track of current/ongoing meeting time and keeping the next client posted if there are any delays.

Defining goals

User goal should always be in user’s language. It provides valuable insight on what the user wants :

I don't want to manually calculate time differences again which leads to error.

Basis my busy and occupied meeting schedule, I want to know my available/free time slots that I have during the day.

I don't want to switch between multiple apps for accessing my email and meeting schedule.

I want my client to be posted in case I am running late without having to type an email or message every time.

Formulating design principles

Keeping the user goals, I had formulated a set of design principles to be used as an underlying framework while conceptualising the user journey and designing the interface of the app to be successfully adopted by such user types:

Functioning as a one-stop on-the-go tool for viewing all meeting related information at one place while reducing cognitive load on the user.

Ensuring transparency between the user and client by exchange of important messages and delays well informed in time and resultantly aiding to healthier relationship between both the parties involved.

Achieving seamless transition between multiple channels of engagement by integrating necessary third party applications into the app's information architecture.

Reducing intrusion in terms of sending reminders and notifications to the user.

Key features

I have listed out some key features that will help me to prioritise important functions of the app that would aid to achieve user goals, as mentioned above:

A simple timeline view of the days for a given month which shows the scheduled events as separate cards.

Travel schedule of user integrated within the timeline with free slots duration and travel time between origin and client's office clearly mentioned.

Google Maps integrated location suggestions and automatic detection of client office/venue address with option to view directions and time required to navigate from current location.

Automatic detection of timezone/change in timezones when scheduling a proposed meeting/traveling to an international client’s office.

When scheduling a meeting, time slots are shown in the form of a schematic timeline. The timeline shows two time zones - client's office location and current location time zone.

Creation of sales meetings/appointments with feature to maintain mail-based communication to fetch meeting data from there and create event with a single tap.

Feature to inform client in a single tap by using pre defined mail template in case the user is running late.

Edge cases

If the meeting over exceeds its scheduled time window or the flight is delayed and is at the verge of eating into the next meeting scheduled for the same day, reminder to extend time by a certain degree would shift the following meeting’s start time by that much time, and alert about the delay for the following meeting to that client.

Quick actions on alert based push notifications, for any given day’s meeting, to navigate to the client's office/message the client for being late, without having to enter the app and search for the meeting entry on the calendar, is accounted for while sketching out the ideas.

Schematic representation of timeline when scheduling the meeting time ensures if the time difference between the client's location and current location is such that it leads to a difference in dates at both the locations, the date is automatically updated. This will alleviate the experience of the users dealing with time differences, hence providing clarity and ease of use.

Wireframes

A brainstorming activity of sketching out low-fidelity ideas helped me to visualise the key features while accounting for the edge cases.

UI mockups

A simple timeline view of the days which straightaway nosedives into informing the user of the day’s planned schedule, with constant alerts to help them take necessary timely actions, removes the unnecessary clutter and distractions and helps the user become more productive with proper planning with week and monthly view.

Covering ground on the edge-cases like reminding the users of change in timezone upon entering international soil or any delay that might affect the scheduled meeting that follow it and to help user take necessary quick actions, increases the stickiness and likability of the user towards the app.

Important case- change in timezone update

Scheduling a future meeting event details by adopting a more interactive yet a more user friendly way of creating a meeting appointment with the option of entering the timezone and using natural language processing to detect keywords and trigger contextual options delights the user.

Use case 2 : Meeting details when the user is a guest in a scheduled meeting

Working on the principle of aiding transparency and healthier association, push notifications which improves upon the customer touchpoint to take decisions on the outset, without entering the app, evokes an intuitively positive response in the user’s mind.

Other ancillary features

Suggestive time availabilities between the client and the salesperson within the mail conversation, by showing a schematic representation of the timezones integrated as part of the natural language processing, will alleviate the experience of the users dealing with time differences, hence providing clarity and ease of use.

Ability to attach spreadsheets and other files/documents/notes to the calendar event.

Setting up meeting priorities if their are more than one meetings scheduled for the same time.

In conclusion...

What could I have done better

Deep dive into researching more about the key solutions offered here by reading up on articles and papers written on sales productivity and efficiency and also explore other competitors in the productivity domain.

Talk to experienced salespeople who travel frequently and take learnings from their daily journeys.

Usability test of the designs with users.