I thought to myself how might I improve the experience of the Reminders App? I was kind of furious that I couldn't see a calender view of upcoming reminders. Yes you technically can make reminders in the calender app. If you do that though then what is the point of the reminders app? Some people may want to keep the two apps seperate. Some people may want to tie them together. I wanted to see what other people thought so I interviewed my parents, my sister, and two of my close friends to see if they had any problems with how it has been implemented.
I first asked if they all were using apple calenders and the reminders app. My dad said that he uses a desktop app for that instead of his phone. However he also said that he would rather have everything in place if he were to use that. My mom says she uses the reminders app, but uses a calender application from work. She says she actually would like to keep it seperate for this reason. My sister uses both but she also would like to keep it seperate as she says the notifications she recieves are enough for her. My best friend Dan is also in the same situation as my sister as he prefers to have them sperate. My other friend named Mikey, is always busy. He constantly looks at the calendar. He would prefer that they were both linked.
The next question I asked them was how could I improve the experience of the reminders app? My dad said I should put a calendar within the reminders app reguardless of wheter the user would merge as being able to see a reminder before it happens is helpful. The other thing he told me was to make everything that needs to be used large and easily seen. My mom wanted tiered lists. She said that she likes having a list of things she needs to do for things like cleaning. So she would group vacumm, wash dishes, and wash clothes. My sitster said she would like to have tiered lists but she wouldn't need the calender. My best friend also said he would like tiered lists and would maybe use the calender but he wasn't sure. Mikey said he would like to be able to have tiered lists a calendar and would be able to see all of the entries and lists no matter which app he was using.
Finally, I asked how I could imporve the calendar app. My dad said that the bubbles under the date should be color coded for each list and possibly change the color around the number to reflect that if there is only one list active. He also said maybe add the option to add a star shape for the most important things. My mom said that she wouldn't use it but agreed with my dad on the points he made. My sister said that the only thing she said was that she wanted to be able to color code the dates as colors help her remember things better. Dan said that he was fine with the way the calendar app funtioned as is. He liked how simple it was. Mikey on the other hand was the opposite. He wanted to be able to change times on events, color code them, and be able to have all of his changes automatically update to the other app.
After gathering all of the data I realized more people had problems with the reminder app than they did with the calendar app. That made confirmed my feelings about how the reminders app was frustrating to use. I also didn't really have a problem with the calendar app other than the fact that I wanted to be able to see everything I had set up for the given day. My goal now was to try to implement everything that I had been told would make their experience with the apps better. I had to all of this while figuring out how to merge both apps functionalities without stepping on the wishes of the others who wanted to keep them sperate. Figuring out how to do that was going to be difficult, but I was up to the challenge.
This is what the reminders app looks like when it is first opened. There is nothing wrong with the way they have it set up but it just needs better organization. If I were to have more lists how am I supposed to know what lists are in the other tabs.
This is the redesign I came up with. This redesign allow for the reminders app to be merged with the calendar app if the user chooses to do so. An extra tab for the calendar has been added so the user does not have to go back to the calander to see just the reminders. The user has the option to remove the calendar tab if the user does not wish to use that.
This is what the reminders entries looks like when you click on one of the tabs. The problem I have with it is you don't have any way to make hierchy in the lists. So I can't group any of them. If I were to have more lists how am I supposed to know what lists are in the other tabs.
With this new redesign, entries can be changed up and down and left and right. You can even move up and down inside a hierarchy or move right around it to drag it out.
This is what the changed entries look like when you click on an entry. I actually like the way they have this set up. The only thing I changed is that you can edit in hierarchies.
With this new redesign, you can edit in hierarchies and set times for each entry in the hierarchy when reminders should be sent to your phone.
This is what the calendar app looks like when it is first opened. There is nothing wrong with the way they have it set up. I just wante to be able to intergrate reminders into the calendar app.
This redesign has the reminders from the reminders app seamlessly integrated into the calendar app. This includes the times that was entered into each one from the reminders app
Once again I don't think there is anything wrong with the way this was originally done. I just needed a way to add the reminderss list.
I added a list for the reminders entries on the calender lists. You can change settings in there like you would on the calendar app.
Some feedback I got from the users I researhed before were as follows. Add the ability to change entries in the calendar app and it would update automatically in the reminders app. Remove the done button when cliking on entries. It should only be used when moving them and adding hierarchy. On the calender list it should state somewhere that a certain list came from the reminders app. Likewise on the Reminders app it should state which lists were merged with the calendar app. Some said that it would be better to move the "Merge with Calendars" button to with inside the links. I think it makes more sense to put it there that everybody knows it is there. While none of them said they used the show declined events slider, they said to keep it as other users may want to use that. The most requested feature was the ability to change the order of the events in the calendar. Some may want to organize it by time or they may want to organize it based off of the groups. It wouldn't be confusing either as each group would be color coded anyways. The other big thing that they said needed to be added was a way to unlink the calender app and the reminders app if one so choosed to do so. Unfortunately I forgot to add color bubbles under the date. I also didn't know how to implement that if you had a ton of lists for that day.