Less is More: Design Evolution of Presdo’s User Interface
Mies van der Rohe the architect is famously quoted as saying “less is more”. While this saying has become fashion in Silicon Valley, in reality it’s hard to do. As product designers at Presdo working to make our product better, we constantly strive to make things more powerful and simpler at the same time. It is a sure sign of goodness when we can achieve the same things for users while removing something, since it makes our product easier to understand.
We made such changes recently by removing the time scroller part of our UI, a.k.a. the UI for picking a “best time” while creating events.
We’re here today to discuss this and other design changes and fill you in on Presdo’s design process. These changes are subtle but important changes and we want our users to know about them and more importantly, why we did them.
Many users will know that you were able to pick a best time within a time window or choice of times when you create an event:
Even though it was a useful feature at times, we decided to eliminate the ability to pick a best time when setting the time for an event.
What this means now is that, like before, when you give a time window or a choice of times for an event, Presdo will make specific time suggestions to your guests within your time preference and collect their input about best times.
Why We Did It
First, we felt that there are more situations where it was actually more useful if the organizer did not pick the best time.
We’d like to illustrate this with an example. Let’s say Henry is a small business owner who wants to use Presdo to schedule consultations with different clients at his office. Henry does not care when clients come in, as long as they come in during on Thursday or Friday afternoon when he has set aside time for such visits. It makes sense for Henry to give clients the first opportunity to pick a time within the time window he desires.
With the recent change to the way Presdo works, it’s now possible to achieve this; Henry enters a time window, “thu or fri afternoon”, for every meeting he wants to schedule and sends them off to his clients. Each party picks the most convenient time for themselves.
Here’s what Henry’s guests will see when they reply:
As time slots for Thursday and Friday afternoon are filled, new clients will have only still-available time slots suggested to them during Thursday and Friday afternoon. By removing the time scroller UI, we actually make Presdo’s behavior more useful for Henry.
Have we lost anything? Not too much. Some users already told us they would still like to pick a “best time”. In fact, we believe that it’s not so much that they want to pick a best time as there are times that are not as good for them. To get around this, you can still guide Presdo by being more specific about the times. For example, you can enter individual time choices like “thu 2:30 or 4″ or time windows like “thu after 2:30 or friday afternoon” into Presdo.
New Time Entry Feedback
While we were at it, we also enhanced a feature that users told us they loved, which is a confirmation below the time text field showing what Presdo recognizes as you type it in:
New Guest Reply UI
We also simplified the user experience for guests by removing the “Suggest Another Time” button when they reply. The “Yes” and “No” buttons are still there as before. Of course, it’s still possible for guests to suggest another time, but now it’s part of deciding “yes” to the event instead of a totally separate action:
We believe this change will make it even easier for invitees to understand and interact Presdo.
By taking away some parts of the UI, we’ve actually made Presdo more flexible and powerful.
What do you think of these “less is more” changes? Let us know!