Evernote:
Tasks on Calendar

Users rank the ability to organize tasks on a calendar and track external events alongside Evernote tasks as the 5th most common feature request.

Implementing this feature can enhance the value of due dates, our most popular paid task feature, and create cross-promotion opportunities between tasks and calendar integration, driving conversions for both.

My Role

As the Product Designer on this project, my responsibilities include collaborating closely with the researcher, product manager, and developers, articulating design solutions and their rationale to key stakeholders, and coordinating with different feature teams to ensure a seamless user experience throughout the ecosystem.

Challenge

Core feature

The project challenge involves integrating Evernote's Calendar and Task features while simultaneously highlighting the unique value proposition of each individual feature.

Monetization

Strategies need to be devised to encourage users to upgrade to higher paid tiers, particularly the Professional tier, where the task on the calendar is exclusively available.

Track your calendar events and to-dos in one place

Integrating the Evernote task and calendar features

Productively manage your task from calendar view

Create tasks quickly by tapping on a date and time on the calendar.

Easily generate tasks due on a specific date by clicking on the new task icon.

Check off tasks directly from the calendar view.

Plan your day with integrated task and event viewing

Easily arrange your tasks alongside your events in the calendar view

Filter tasks and events by type to customize your calendar view

Designing with user insights

User testing was conducted with 8 Evernote users who connect their calendars to Evernote and create tasks with due dates to better understand their preferences for task management on a calendar.

How many all-day tasks and events should be displayed when overlapping?

Previous calendar view showed up to 6 overlapping all-day events, but for tasks, only a check icon was displayed, which users found unhelpful. To address this, we reduced the display to 2 all day tasks and events at a time.

Iteration: less overlapping all day events+tasks

Original all day events

Should completed tasks be shown on the calendar?

After researching users' preferences, we found that most of them wanted completed tasks to be visible on the calendar, regardless of their previous settings for task. Therefore, we made completed tasks visible on the calendar by default for all users.

Completed task in Calendar

Completed task in To do list

Monetization:
Encourage users to upgrade to higher paid tiers

Work in partnership with growth team to develop a strategy that focuses on increasing the conversion rate.

We initially developed a strategy to display a placeholder task on personal users' calendars to promote our new feature and encourage them to upgrade to try it.

However, after consulting with our growth team and analyzing user data, we discovered that personal plan users, who are already paying customers, are hesitant to encounter paywalls and prefer not to add content to their calendars that they did not create themselves.

Consequently, we pivoted our approach towards a lighter solution that enhances the user experience without interfering with it.

Paywall for all Personal users:

Paywall in overflow menu

New feature banner

Key takeaways

Engage other relevant teams from the outset, not just for better alignment, but to foster trust and respect between teams.
When presenting to various stakeholders, from the CEO to other team members to internal team members, ensure that there is sufficient context provided and agree upon the focus of the discussion beforehand.
Be willing to make trade-offs, particularly when working on larger projects where there is no perfect solution. Only by releasing the feature can we determine if our strategy is effective or not.