inku calendar
Designing a retro ePaper display that brings wit and charm to your daily schedule
my Role
Product Design Lead
My Scope
Design Strategy
Information Architecture
Content Design
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Team
1 Engineer (Founder)
2 Industrial Designers
1 Campaign Marketer
Timeline
4 Months (Device + Kickstarter)
2 Months (App 0->1)
Inku was born out of a desire for old school calendars to blend with modern technology and a love for retro games and aesthetics.
Inku is an ePaper calendar that lives on your desk and syncs with your favorite calendar and task apps, bringing wit and charm to your daily schedule with smart features and an AI avatar companion.
I worked with the founder to design the desktop calendar experience and its companion app from the ground up.
Digital calendars are powerful, but can be distracting and cluttered, making it hard to parse and annoying to keep checking in on.
For Inku, we wanted to build an experience that summarized your day for you, removing the feeling of chaos and clutter, all while injecting some whimsy into your day.
My starting point was a simple proof of concept prototype that ineffectively used the screen's real estate.
All of the functional tidbits the calendar offered came in the form of commentary from the AI avatar companion. The progress bar updated as you completed events, but didn't provide any additional information.
Product Principles
Useful
There is a small amount of real estate to convey information, so we need to make sure that we use the space we have to show the most important information.
Smart
Leverage AI and contextual timing to show what users most want to know from their calendars and to-do apps the moment they are engaging with Inku.
Joyful
Inject fun and whimsy whenever we get the chance via the avatar companion and its commentary throughout the day.
I tested concepts with our users early on and found that since this is a supplemental device, the avatar companion is more important than information density.
Our initial directions emphasized calendar functionality and fitting as much information as we could given the small screen size. After testing, we pivoted to highlighting the avatar and video game-like UI, only showing the most relevant calendar information.
Users require different information depending on what time of day they're engaging with Inku.
During the following round of design iterations, we found that certain concepts would be good before the day starts, others for a busy meeting day. This led me to propose three different concepts for different times of day: pre-day, as you work, and after your day is completed.
This proved to be more useful for our testers and gave us flexibility with how we present information throughout the day.
final states
Themes and cases to match each customer's aesthetic
Adhering to the retro gaming vibe, I created three themes that users can choose from in the app. This allows for a more personal experience for each calendar, while also paving the way for additional themes that will expand Inku’s audience beyond this niche aesthetic.
Designing a companion app to set up and manage your Inku calendar
To be able to configure the device, we needed to build an app that could connect Inku with all of the apps users use to track their events and tasks.
After a successful Kickstarter launch, I designed the app from 0->1, building out a focused and functional MVP that can scale as Inku grows.
initial architecture
final architecture
Improving user comprehension through clear information architecture
Due to a technical constraint, users can only manage their apps at the user level, and can't custom connect them per device. The initial iteration of the IA was device-first, but caused confusion for users when trying to customize their integrations per device.
By tweaking the navigation structure and shifting toward a tab format, we were able to provide a lot more clarity through a more intuitive app architecture.
Upload your own custom companion to guide you through your day
Since people were most excited about the avatar companion, as an incentive stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign we designed the ability for users to upload a custom avatar to their Inku device.
This lets users create an even more personalized experience, from using their favorite character to creating their own.
Bring Inku along with you wherever you go
We designed and built iOS and Android widget versions of Inku to launch to beta users while the devices were being manufactured. This allowed us to gather user feedback and improve upon the smart summaries and companion commentary ahead of shipping the full device.