Smart Calendar Consolidation for Busy Professionals
Modern professionals juggle multiple calendars—work, personal, family, and team—across various platforms. This fragmented view causes missed events, double bookings, and increased cognitive load.
Challenges
- Switching between multiple calendar platforms
- Frequent conflicts and missed events
- Lack of visibility into shared/team availability
- No unified system for time blocking and protection
Solutions
- Unified integration with major calendar providers (Google, Outlook, Apple, Notion, Cozi, Zoho)
- Conflict detection and smart suggestions for alternate times
- Customizable color-coded categories, labels, and templates
- Shared availability views and permissions for teams or families
- “No-book” hours for protecting focus time
Problem Statement
Objectives
- Consolidate multiple calendars into a single, streamlined interface
- Reduce scheduling conflicts and missed events
- Improve the efficiency of collaborative planning
- Enhance user control over time management through smart blocking and customization
Hypothetical success metrics
- 40% reduction in time spent switching between apps
- 66% fewer reported scheduling conflicts after integration
- Higher satisfaction scores for planning efficiency in usability tests
- Successful onboarding (schedule blocking notwithstanding) in under 3 minutes
I began by creating three personas—The Professional Parent, The Freelance Multitasker, and The Team Coordinator—each representing distinct scheduling challenges. Using scenario-based user journeys, I mapped frustrations, thoughts, and opportunities.
Key insights:
- Fragmentation: Users switch between 2–5 calendar tools daily.
- Cognitive Overload: Manual conflict detection is a recurring frustration.
- Collaboration Friction: Coordinating with others often requires multiple back-and-forth messages.
Research artifacts included:
- User Flows mapping onboarding, calendar integration, and event creation.
- Priority Matrix to define the MVP features (multi-calendar sync, conflict alerts, no-book hours, and shared views).
- Crazy 8s sketches to quickly explore layout and interaction ideas.
With research synthesized, I developed a sitemap and content hierarchy focusing on fast onboarding and clear access to core features. The integration flow was designed to connect calendars within two taps, supported by SSO (Single Sign-On) options.
Early sketches explored variations of the dashboard, focusing on:
- Visual clarity for color-coded events
- One-tap switching between personal, work, and shared views
- Embedded time-block templates for common activities
Prototypes evolved from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity UI in Figma, incorporating responsive layouts for web and mobile.
.jpg)
.jpg)
I conducted informal usability walkthroughs with 5 participants who spent some time engaging with the functional prototype. Those testers' feedback revealed:
- Users want to be able to quickly toggle calendars on/off
- Conflict resolution suggestions needed to be automated and more visible
- The onboarding flow felt smooth but could use tooltips to highlight features
Through these insights, adjustments were made to:
- The dashboard’s event filtering controls
- More prominent conflict alert banners
- A contextual onboarding overlay for first-time logins
While Schedually remains a concept project, the design outcomes point toward significant real-world impact:
- A more intuitive way to manage multi-calendar chaos
- Clearer event categorization and conflict resolution
- Streamlined collaboration for families, freelancers, and teams
Beyond concept validation, the process demonstrated my ability to:
- Translate qualitative insights into actionable features
- Design clean, scalable UI systems for multi-platform use
- Deliver a polished, portfolio-ready prototype that mirrors real-world app complexity
