Revamped events for Google Calendar
Introduction
Background
Google Calendar is one of the most popular calendar and scheduling apps for both businesses and individuals. Users can add public calendars, create personal or work events, invite co-workers, conduct video conferences and much more. One of the most crucial aspects of event scheduling is the ability to create a recurring event. The current flow on the mobile app forces users to follow several steps, creating a high amount of friction and introduces potential points of possible error. First time users have a hard time creating and customizing recurring events to their liking. Additionally, users cannot share video conference links directly while creating an event.
Objective
By understand the pain points in a user’s journey, their needs and goals I aimed at redefining the process of creating a recurring event and sharing video conference links. The main goal was to streamline the process and create a compact UI which allows users to accomplish their tasks with minimum steps and friction.
My Process
Understanding Users
Interviews and Surveys
Assumptions
Analyze data and Ideate
Competition analysis
Solutions to pain points
Workflow and key screens
Create Design Solution
Wireframes and key feature workings
User testing and design iterations
High fidelity design
User Research
Key questions & answers that aided the design solution
What are the major pain points of the user in the journey of scheduling their events?
Users commonly encounter pain points during the event scheduling process, such as difficulty in navigating the app, time-consuming event setup procedures, limited customization options, and challenges in finding efficient ways to manage recurring events.
What is the target audience for the feature update?
The target audience for the feature update is the existing user base of the Google Calendar app on iPhone. This includes professionals, students, and individuals with busy schedules who rely on the app to manage and organize their events and appointments effectively.
What aspects of an event does the user customize?
Users have the ability to customize various aspects of their events, including the event title, date, time, location, duration, reminders, and recurrence patterns. They seek flexibility to tailor these elements according to their specific needs and preferences.
What are the users goals?
The primary goals of users are to efficiently manage their schedules, ensure timely attendance to events, and maintain a well-organized calendar. Users aim to achieve these goals by utilizing features that provide them with a seamless and intuitive experience for scheduling, customizing, and tracking their events.
Target audience & Personas
The target audience for the Google Calendar feature includes individuals who seek an efficient and user-friendly solution for managing their schedules and events. These users span various demographics and professions, ranging from busy professionals and students to retirees, each with unique scheduling needs and preferences. On the bases of this and the overall interviews, the following 3 personas were created:
Assumptions
Users have already determined the specific customizations they want to apply to their events.
It is assumed that users have a clear vision of the customizations they want to make, such as setting specific reminders, notifications, or recurrence patterns. They expect the app to provide an interface that allows them to easily apply these pre-defined customizations.
The existing logic and features within the Google Calendar app are sufficient to meet user needs.
It is assumed that the current functionality and logic implemented in the app are already capable of fulfilling the users' requirements. Users do not expect any significant technological innovation but rather expect the app to leverage its existing capabilities to provide a seamless event scheduling experience.
The customizations made by users will fall into daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly recurrence patterns.
It is assumed that users typically require event customizations that follow a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedule. They expect the app to offer these recurrence options as part of the customization features, allowing them to easily specify the desired frequency for their events
Ideation
Current Flow
The current workflow in the app is very tedious and time consuming. Additionally there are multiple instances where users can make simple errors costing them additional time.
Usability Issues
Multiple unnecessary steps, thus the flow is very long
Options are confusing to the users
Error prevention is missing in certain instances
Users generally used the wording “I want to schedule the event daily except weekends” and not “I want to schedule the event every week on weekdays”. Current flow supports the later statement. Daily recurring events occur daily without exceptions.
Affinity Mapping
Affinity mapping revealed key themes from user research for the Google Calendar Scheduling Event Revamp:
Difficulty in customizing recurring events, such as setting recurrence frequency and event end dates (12 out of 18 participants).
Cluttered user interface, leading to confusion and overwhelming information display (14 out of 18 participants).
Lack of intuitive event management tools, including difficulties in adjusting event settings and finding customization features (15 out of 18 participants).
Time-consuming event scheduling process with long and tedious steps for creating and editing recurring events (11 out of 18 participants)
Competition Analysis
I did a thorough analysis of Apple’s Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar, two of the largest competitors of Google Calendar to gauge existing solutions in the market, their pain points and advantages to gain a better understanding for solving the problem.
Apple's Calendar
Pros
Shorter task flow, thus less time consuming
Select increment number, duration, interval and days is in the same page
Compact design, yet intuitive
No additional custom option (doesn’t create confusion)
Pain points
User needs to click on add event, the button is not clearly highlighted
Less number of preset defaults, user has to add everything
Inability to add cross platform virtual meets (User needs to manually add a Google Meet link or Zoom link). Only FaceTime is supported.
Microsoft Outlook
Pros
Shorter task flow, thus less time consuming
Compact and overview page
No additional custom option (doesn’t create confusion)
Pain points
User needs to click on add event, the button is not clearly highlighted
Inability to add cross platform virtual meets (User needs to manually add a Google Meet link or Zoom link). Only Skype is supported.
Interval, On days and Until are all in separate page, increases the TACT time.
New Task Flow
The new task flow for customizing recurring events in the Google Calendar app was designed to improve efficiency and user experience. By implementing a simplified process with a single page, users could now easily select their desired interval, end date or occurrence, and other customizations.
Design Solution
Initial Wireframes (Key screens)
Derived Solutions: Choosing Intervals
Users have the flexibility to choose their desired interval and end date or occurrence, all on a single page. By providing complete customizability by default and eliminating preset options, the flow becomes more streamlined and less prone to errors.
End recurring event
The revamped "Ends On" section in the Google Calendar Scheduling Event Revamp project offers a shorter and seamless task flow, consolidating all recurring event scheduling actions on one page inspired by the Google Calendar UX on web.
More options in video conference customization and sharing
Users can directly share video conference links on other platforms like slack to share with their coworkers for a seamless process of joining meets.
User Testing
The objective of the user testing was to gain insight into how the users would use the new feature and their interaction with known pain points and search for new ones. These sessions were fundamental to create the Iteration #2 which addresses the key issues found in user testing.
Equipment and environment
I conducted real-world testing with 20 participants in cafes, homes and offices with an iPhone with the figma app installed with the prototype.
 
Testing sessions and tasks
The sessions lasted 20-30 mins where participants were tasked with various tasks like creating recurring events with different customizations, sharing video conference links and more.
Observations and analysis
Sessions were observed and scored on different metrics. While most users were able to accomplish the tasks, several users faced issues. The insights dictated further iterations to cater to various pain points.
Key Takeaways
Confusing day picker
Day picker was a little confusing with only the first letter of the day. Adding the first three letter like “Mon” enhanced the experience and reduced the time taken by users to choose days as their options were clearer.
Redundant Ends On page
A simple three-option radio button menu now enables users to do all customizations on the same page. Displaying all three options upfront enhances user clarity in customizing the end for recurring events.
Lack of option to share video conference link directly
Users expressed their desire to share those links on their communication channels like slack immediately as they create the event. I assumed that there would not be any technical difficulty as that feature is present in the google calendar on web.
Learning
Learnings
I learned the impact friction reduction can have on user experience, and gained valuable insight from unexplored zones such as App Store and customer forums. These helped me to get a better understanding into getting a user-centric approach to design.
Future Scope
Looking ahead, exploring opportunities to integrate a smart suggestion feature for event management and scheduling with the help of Google’s Bard AI is an exciting avenue to explore. The AI integration can also be applied to customizing events, setting alarms and reminders, etc. IT can further be developed into an event prioritization feature to make the platform more intuitive.

Although Google’s workspace is an ecosystem in itself, we could consider avenues of partnership with 3rd party project management tools like Notion, Jira and more to increase the TAM and capture a larger range of audience which might prefer a variety of different tools.
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