Outlook Calendar on Windows

Window’s Outlook Calendar ships to 250 million devices worldwide, and 93% of our engaged users are enterprise customers. Windows has almost ten times more calendar users than our other platforms (web, Mac, iOS, and Android). Our biggest challenge was making non-disruptive updates. If it was going to be disruptive, we had to weigh the cost versus benefit of the change. This project would provide an overall update, a visual system, and a cohesive baseline for introducing new Calendar features to Window’s Outlook moving forward.

This project took six months for research, design, and engineering. I was the lead and sole designer for this project. I collaborated with designers and product managers from across platforms and area experts to ship a cohesive experience.

Team: Donna Seo (Design Lead), Brandon Haist (Researcher), Jennifer Lu (Product Manager), Venkatesh Narayanan (Engineering Manager)

Partners: Hiroshi Tsukara (Calendar Item Designer) and Christina Ergonis (Calendar and Category Colors Designer)

The current calendar for Outlook on Windows was not aligned to a shared design system, leaving gaps in user needs and making it challenging to ship cohesive experiences across platforms.

Design Principles

1. Inform, not overwhelm 
Customers can quickly scan and find information on upcoming time commitments. 

2. Fresh but familiar
Window’s Outlook Calendar is visually beautiful and compliments the refreshed Mail module. As a result, existing Outlook customers should be able to dive right in and be more productive right away.

3. Align with other Outlook platforms when appropriate
Through extensive years of research, we have learned that Window’s Outlook customers are resistant to change. On the other hand, they have also said how the platforms feel and operate differently. We took this opportunity to bring the platforms closer together when appropriate.

The calendar updates successfully shipped. The changes were non-disruptive and improved the overall experience. Although we have not made any changes to the performance, there was perceived performance enhancement, with one customer remarking, “it feels less laggy”.