Group Planning on Whatsapp: Calendar Feature

The process of designing for group planning

UX/UI - Mobile App

My Role: UX/UI Researcher

Duration: 6 Weeks

Tools Used: Figma

Overview

This project focuses on enhancing WhatsApp with a calendar feature to improve how groups organize events and sync schedules. This addition aims to transform how groups organize events, simplify communication, and enable users to effortlessly align their schedules.

Problem

Why is it so hard to plan group trips or events?

As based on true events. And indeed the flight prices went up.

Research

User Interviews

To understand this better, I decided to explore the experiences and pain points of 7 participants who range from avid planners to laid back speculators.

Our interview objectives:

  • Identify common pain points in group planning.

  • Explore tools and methods currently used.

  • Understand group decision-making dynamics.

  • Assess the emotional impact of group planning challenges.

  • Uncover unmet needs for potential solutions.

Affinity Mapping

Gathering up all the information from our interviews, we group together common themes to spot patterns in user feedback.

By visualizing these relationships, we prioritize will prioritize designing features and flows that address core pain points and needs.

Here’s a quick summary:

  • Group Size: Large groups result in prolonged back-and-forth exchanges and delayed decision-making.

  • Scheduling: Multiple individual schedule can make planning difficult and time-consuming.

  • Lack of Tools: Lack of efficient tools to help organize group schedules and communicating preferences

  • Open calendars: A unanimous agreement between all participants is that organizing work meetings is an easier and simpler process due to having access to shared calendars.

  • Reminders: more than fifty percent of the participants will use them for planning and setting reminders at some point.

Market Research

Since all our users have experience using calendars from work, we decided to research the rate of calendar usage.

Some Stats about Calendar

  • 83% of employed Americans depend on a calendar to manage their workflow

  • 73% of employed Americans found it easy to maintain work life balance with a calendar

Google Calendar Stats as of 2024

  • There are over 1.5 billion events created on Google Calendar each month.

  • The average engagement on Google Calendar is 3.5x/week.

  • The average user spends 10 minutes per day actively using Google Calendar.

  • Over 60% of Google Calendar users have created recurring events on the platform.

  • 85% of Google Calendar users rely on the app for managing their daily schedule and tasks.

  • 45% of Google Calendar users use the app to set reminders for important deadlines and events.

Personas

Meet our two personas, Imani and Taylor, who will help us develop and design the calendar feature by learning their goals, paintpoints, behaviors to ensure their needs are met.

Design

Task Flows

The user stories laid the groundwork for constructing our user flows, illustrating each step users take to navigate the app. I reviewed and refined these flows to ensure a cohesive and intuitive experience across all actions.

1. Easy Scheduling

Allow users to set their availability so they can quickly find a date that works for everyone, reducing the hassle of back-and-forth messages.

2. Event Reminders

Provide notifications for upcoming events to keep everyone informed and engaged, helping to ensure participation and reduce last-minute changes.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Using the task flow as a skeletal base, I sketched out the rudimentary layout of the feature, keeping Whatsapp’s DNA relevant in the design.

Homepage

Group Chat

Settings

Icon

Calendar Settings

Calendar

Notification

Update Availability

Create Event

Usability Test

We ran each participant through the task flows to observe how they interacted with the newly designed calendar feature.

During these sessions, we took note of their reactions, feedback, and inputs, capturing both their ease of use and any challenges they encountered. The below summarizes the feedbacks:

7

Participants

100%

Success rate

Level 1

Ease of use

2

Suggestions

  • Privacy concerns were raised, with a suggestion for a “Who can see my calendar” visibility option, a comment that will be taken into consideration in the final product.

  • Users would like to see the “Create Event” drawn out more as the low fidelity wire frames did not clearly explain the process.

Final Product

Accessing your availability

To adjust your availability, simply navigate to the options menu and find the calendar settings. From there, you can easily update or modify your schedule as needed to reflect any changes.

Adjusting availability

To adjust availability in WhatsApp’s calendar feature, users can add or delete events from their personal calendar, ensuring their schedules are synced across apps. This keeps group members updated on real-time availability when organizing events.

Adding a group event

Easily add a group event from the attachment menu. Review members availabilities before selecting a date and time. And don’t forget to set a reminder!

What’s next?

Next steps would be to gather insights on the WhatsApp calendar feature, I plan to collect data on how often the feature is used, identify any hiccups users encounter, and explore potential shortcuts to enhance efficiency.

This will involve a combination of analytics tracking, user surveys, and in-depth feedback sessions to understand user behavior and refine the feature accordingly.

Additionally, I aim to explore ways to ease users' concerns about privacy, especially when syncing personal calendars, by ensuring clear communication of data usage policies and implementing robust privacy controls.

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