Graphical Representation

MicroCal for Students

                                                  Sample Screen View Of MicroCal

Why for students?

As you know, students always have a lot of things to do. Not only school related things (meetings for projects, doing assignments, etc.) but also social things such as meetings with friends, birthdays or trips. Also we know that an efficient time management plays key role in success. For this purpose, we design a MicroCal for students so that the students can manage their activities easily and use their time more efficiently. In other words, students can use our MicroCal to create their own time schedule. However, although, the target group is students, our MicroCal design can also be used by everyone other than students.

Highligts:

This calendar is designed for iPhones with touch screen. We try to add more features in their 3 inch screen without decreasing the usability of calendar.

MicroCal has the basic functions such as creating, deleting, and updating of an event.

Here is the brief description of these important icons in the design:

• Create event: When the user choose special day it goes to other page that can create and write their things on it.
• Delete event: After choosing a day, user can delete the event.
• QuickAdd: If the user wants to add something fast, user can use this icon to create fast events. For instance, just typing “Meeting with John tomorrow at 7:30” in a pop up screen will add this event to the schedule. That is, QuickAdd is not time consuming.
• Upcoming event: User can see the next events in a list form.
• Jump to date: This feature is considered as an short cut to reach a day. For instance, if user wants to see 16^th Feb’s schedule, s/he only selects the date and touches the “Jump to date” icon.
• Plan: With clicking on it user can choose week or months and see the general information of it for example which day is off and why, the different occasion can see in the details by choosing one of them.

*   Also “Country” selection part can be placed under the “Settings” part. Since the details of the calendar can change from country to country, so each user can see their calendar and know about their details of their calendar.

 Design Details:

We use hide/show sliding bar, so user can make good use of the screen (See “Year” selection part).

Background color or font colors can be adjustable. Generally, Grey – White colors are used to simplify vision.

Geometric shapes, forms and several metaphors (Clock, Pie Chart) are used to support visuality.

For icons we follow general color codes and signs such as for “create event” green plus icon, for “Delete event” red cross icon, etc.

User can adjust the view of the schedule. User can choose Monthly view for general overview or weekly or daily view to see more specific details.

In selected month’s calendar, weekends are separated from the weekdays by a space. At the beginning of each week, numbers of the weeks are placed. Selected day is enframed with yellow shape. Also current day appears in yellow color.

Small indicators are used to guide users. For instance, user can get around with a square shape in calendar. Another example, small red triangle is used to show that, day with this sign has at least one event.

How it works?

First of all, user selects the date from first page. Current year and month is always selected as default.

In second screen, user sees the current month’s schedule.

Whenever user try to add an event regularly (“Create event”) by touching plus sign after the selection of the day, user sees the current events for this day on the clock shapes. Occupied hours with color codes are shown. Since this design is especially for students, user able to see their social events and school related events in different colors. 

 

Overview of the day and Add new Event to Day

To add an event to this selected day, user chooses a time space. Then at the bottom of the page, they can choose the activity type by clicking icons and edit the details for this activity.  

 See also: First draft of the design