Why We Need Calendar App Innovation
Many of us today, myself included, work across multiple time zones, constantly trying to figure out optimal times. Few calendar apps are good at that. Then we’re often working with multiple video meeting apps from Teams to Zoom to Google Meet, desperately looking for the links in the invites. Often times, our calendars are linked into task management apps, note apps and other productivity tools like Trello, Jira or Monday, Slack and so on. Our calendars are increasingly becoming a vital tool beyond just time management.
But it seems like more than a month of Sundays since we’ve seen real innovations in calendar apps. It is a largely fractured space that needs more attention. Fortunately, that’s starting to happen. I’m not reviewing calendar apps, there’s plenty of pundits to do that.
As I work at the intersection of digital technologies and humans, largely in how our digital and physical worlds mesh together and how that impacts productivity at work, play and in our cultures. Calendars always seem to be on peoples agendas. But not been paid enough time attention by startups and tech companies. Those that have been developed are still not well designed for humans, they’re designed for systems.
Calendars are complicated apps to develop at best. In the world of email apps, when calendars come into the mix, they get even more complicated. Few outside of Microsoft and Google have mastered them and even they could do with some improvements. Spark for macOS has done quite well and eM Client for Windows. But they remain fairly basic.
Productivity apps are getting into calendars too. Tying them to notes, tasks and the ephemera of our daily digital lives. Note taking app Agenda works based around a calendar. Evernote has some calendar functionality as well as others. Some apps in the productivity world are trying to take people away from calendars without understanding how humans actually use calendars.
So why all of this now? It really is a question of time. More specifically, how we spend and manage our time and the times we live in and a signal that our digital and physical worlds are becoming more intertwined as underlying technologies like Artificial Intelligence and API’s get better at what they do. 2022 is going to be a hot minute for calendar apps.
What’s the Problem?
While calendar apps have been native to Linux, Windows and macOS for decades, little has happened to enrich them outside of a few apps, since then. So much of our lives revolve around calendars. One would think there’d be more apps than there are.
In our digital lives there’s the increasing interconnectivity issue. Calendars need to consider connecting to people not just through email anymore. There’s multiple messaging apps in iOS and Android for mobile, plus social media platforms from Facebook and Twitter to Snap and others. We connect with people in multiple ways. Calendars are lagging in this respect.
Calendars also have to solve for multiple problems beyond just blocking time and scheduling meetings with others. They need to consider location and integration with map apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps (some do), connectivity to multiple social media platforms, bringing in contact information, semantic analysis of not just one’s own data, but others and broader contextual awareness.
Unlike many other apps that only look to solve for one problem, calendar apps, to truly innovate, need to solve for multiple problems. Developing a UX strategy for a calendar app is a complicated mental map. The sheer engineering required behind the scenes is enormous in itself, UI design has to be stellar as well.
The Opportunities
Fortunately, we’ve reached a point where some startups are building new calendar apps, seeing how humans manage their time and need to connect in human ways. Not machine ways. Those are the calendar apps that will win. There are three spaces for calendar apps to play in; 1) personal use, 2) small business and startups and 3) enterprise. The enterprise space will be toughest and would be best approached after sorting the other two first. The business model will likely be subscription based with monthly and annual plans. Perhaps a freemium type approach.
One can predict that calendar app startups will aim for teams, either departments within larger organisations (that’ll be tough) or small businesses and other startups. A huge opportunity that is underserved is the personal market segment, but growing a DTC market for any app is expensive and riddled with time traps.
The key is to see calendars for what they are; hubs. Too often, they are treated as add-ons, a limiting view for the potential of what they could be. The technologies have never been better to create amazing calendar apps.
