To do or not to do: Usability Heuristics of Google Calendar
Diving deeper into UX, this week’s lesson focused on the mechanics and psychology of how products are usable. The lesson highlighted broad criteria that lay the foundation for product design: Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Errors, and Satisfaction (LemErs); however, Jakob Nielsen, hailed as the “king of usability,” developed 10 Usability Heuristics in 1994 as a base guideline for heuristics evaluation that many companies still use today. Let’s apply these heuristic evaluations to an application I most certainly use, as I’m sure many do, to maintain their daily schedules: Google Calendar.
With juggling a full-time job here in Japan as a teacher of scheduling meetings, preparing for class and allowing for flexibility for the countless special events, I always need an accountability guide to ensure I’m on task. Adding a rigorous bootcamp such as UX Academy and planning travel (even in the time of COVID-19), I have used Google Calendar to maintain some regiment in my constantly changing life; I even have to schedule date nights with my wife to make sure that part of my life is not neglected (happy wife, happy life). Google Calendar has helped to ensure I make my waking hours effective and efficient. I’m sure the developers of Google Calendar have applied their own set of heuristics to create an enjoyable application. Let’s apply the baseline of Jakob Nielsen’s commandments:
- Visibility of system status: The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
As I opened up the application, I’m met with an overwhelming color palette (my own doing as I like to color-code things) and a monthly schedule that I’ve set for myself. Wanting to schedule in date night with my wife, I clicked on the appropriate day, clicked on the pinned “+” button on the right bottom corner and the screen fades to white and provides me with 4 options to create on my calendar: Goal, Reminder, Task & Event (Event being immediately darkened in as opposed to the rest, making me assume, this is the most used function). Even up to that point, the system keeps me informed at every step of the way, with both icons and written word to ensure I’ve created an event for myself. The only point of frustration, I could imagine, in terms of accessibility is for “left-handed” users wanting to create an event much more easily with having the “+” button at the bottom left-corner.
2. Match between system and the real world: The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
Google Calender does a really great job of this with having the same layout as an analog calendar. It’s quite simple with the color-scheme being the only pop of color in its UI. I was not lost at any step as I attempted to schedule date night with my wife. I would say though that the differences between the system and the real world are that the various 4 options may be written/created on various mediums in the real world (ie, post-it notes, physical calendar, etc.) and Google Calendar’s differentiating between the doesn’t speak to me as much: I often always go to event to create my scheduling, task rarely, and don’t even touch reminder or goal.
3. User control & freedom: Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
As I wanted to make date night recurring every Thursday with my wife (this happens to be the ONLY day of the week I get to come home early from my one school), I often have to make amendments to recurring events. Upon making the changes to one event, Google Calendar prompts a menu with 4 options to apply this to just one event, this and following events, and all events (even the ones from the past). This feature helps to focus any changes to exactly what I need and I can click save afterwards to keep those changes; on the other hand, if decided that this wasn’t the change I intended to make, Google prompts me with an “are you sure?” option of discard or keep editing. This is definitely a nice feature when exiting, in case I’ve made a mistake or or am not done editing.
4. Consistency & standards: Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
I thoroughly enjoy color coding and even photos of locations and corresponding graphics when creating a schedule. I can imagine it looking a bit overwhelming though when viewing the calendar from a month, especially on mobile. It’s user-friendly interface and why I’ve chosen to use it more so than Apple’s calendar app (Google can be synced to all their Google products across various platforms)
5. Error prevention: Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
No complaints in their ways to prevent error. As mentioned before, prompts are given whether to discard editing or save changes to the appropriate event created. I do wish there were a way to quickly view tasks or reminders from the calendar menu as opposed to clicking on the hamburger button to uncheck other categories; it can be cumbersome to re-check everything once again.
6. Recognition rather than recall: Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
Google Calendar’s interface provides appropriate icons, corresponding text, and options to provide the user an enjoyable scheduling experience. The only thing that I would say that designers may want to review is the inability to create & delete new calendar categories within the mobile app. A user must go to the desktop UI to be able to do this and I wonder if the mobile application is lacking in this function.
7. Flexibility & efficiency of use: Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
Again, Google does well in this in providing useful icons, prompts, and text to guide any user, inexperienced or otherwise to use the functionality of their calendar app.
8. Aesthetic & minimal design: Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
The interface is simple, clean and the colors pop; that being said, I think the events/tasks/reminders themselves could have a drop shadow to show that they can be pressed upon.
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors: Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
Google allows the user to delete events with the swipe to the right and then provides prompts of ‘remove event’ or ‘cancel’ in case you made a mistake. Additionally, if it’s a recurring event then it’ll give the user options to specify specifically what to delete. I think the experienced could be improved upon if there was an undo feature, in case previous schedules or tasks or events need to be re-added to the calendar.
10. Help & documentation: Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
The UI of Google Calendar is meant to be simple and mimic that of the most basic of calendars. The desktop UI is definitely more robust and whilst there isn’t a ‘more’ or ‘help’ section, one needs only Google their questions about the UI and instantly provided explanations. I would give this experience a 9/10 (nothing is perfect) and you’ll still always find me putting in tasks, reminders, and events into my Google Calendar. Don’t worry, I’m still listening to you, I’m just making a note of if…and then I’ll share it with you on your Google Calendar to make sure YOU remember :P
