Huawei Calendar

Our brief was to research the Calendar app and the wider time management and scheduling space, identify user frustrations, and explore how Intent-first System ideas could improve or create new experiences. Existing complaints included sync issues, poor interoperability, limited integration, usability problems and missing features.

The team examined those problems, then looked beyond fixes. My work spanned research synthesis and concept exploration through to the low- and high-fidelity mobile UI.

Desk research drew on user-generated content, academic and industry papers, and expert commentary. Alongside known Calendar complaints, we found a growing interest in services centred on wellbeing, mindfulness and biological rhythms. This led to three connected directions: an AI-considered structure, wellbeing and chronobiology.

By leveraging IFS, the proposal moves the calendar from a simple scheduler towards a contextual companion: one that helps people shape their day around their internal rhythms and intentions, not just external obligations.

“For AI to improve the calendar app, the calendar app needs intentional structure and the AI needs room to express itself.” The team therefore reconsidered how people move between timeframes, views and event management. The proposed layout removes the timeframe tabs from the top, brings overlapping sidebar and overflow actions into one place, and adds a switch between Chronological, Agenda and Health views.

I translated this structure into low-fidelity screens, working through navigation, search, event creation and view changes. The unified sidebar brings calendar management, search, inbox, settings and a return to today into one predictable route.

Events have different characteristics: some have a fixed time, some can move, some involve other people, and others are suggestions from the system. I designed an event language to make these differences legible in the calendar itself.

A solid left border grounds an event to a set time; ungrounded items have no such anchor. A dotted extension shows how far a rolling event can move. Collaborative events use borders on both sides, while suggested events are lighter, hollow and rounded to distinguish them from events created by the user. Colour adds another cue, including blue for rolling events, purple for planned sequences and teal for contextual events.

The three views give the same events different contexts. I developed the interface explorations to show how each could support a particular planning task, rather than adding another layer of information to one crowded timeline.

The day is the default timeframe. Past events fade, the “now” line takes on the colour of the current rhythm, and free time is dilated as a dotted line.

In the week view, events stack per day. The month view surfaces goals created by the user or suggested by the system, alongside insights about trends and considerations. The year view shows entire months at a glance and lets people select a month to go into.

The Create menu presents different verbs for different tasks. Plan is for long-term, complex or multifaceted entities beyond events and reminders. Schedule creates single or recurring events with AI assistance; Remind defines a reminder with more complex triggers.

I designed the Plan entry screen around the four proposed templates—goals, routines, personal growth and life management—plus a custom option. The screen also offers suggested starting points and a way to discuss a plan with Celia.

Schedule contains the expected fields for an event and adds suggestions based on what the user enters. Remind is a separate creation screen, rather than another tab within event creation. I designed the event form, flight confirmation state and reminder trigger screens.

Celia currently appears as a floating element above the app, visually separating it from the content. The proposal asks how its appearance should change if it gains on-screen awareness: Celia could be layered into the Calendar interface, with the entire drawer animated when it is invoked.

I designed the proposed invocation and selection states. With Celia active, a selected calendar element is highlighted so the user can talk about that specific item with the assistant. On-screen awareness and these interactions remain proposals.

The proposal brought together a research-backed direction, simplified navigation, a more expressive event system, views across different timeframes, and new ways to plan, schedule and set reminders. Through wireframes and detailed UI design, I made the team's product ideas tangible as a mobile experience.

Huawei HMI Headquarters adopted the proposal for the next Calendar update. The work shown here is the proposal; its individual concepts should not be read as shipped features.