We began a comprehensive research process with a literature review and competitive analysis. To learn more about Bloomberg employees and their culture, we visited Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York twice. We spoke with 32 employees and conducted semi-structured interviews, contextual inquiries, sensory association activities, and subject matter expert discussions as part of our field study.
A comprehensive review of academic theory and existing software solutions provided the foundation of our research.
We reviewed more than 20 research papers to learn how innovative tools and systems can ease pain points associated with calendaring and scheduling.
We examined the user experience, interaction, and design of more than 25 consumer and enterprise calendar applications across both desktop and mobile offerings.
We conducted extensive qualitative research to understand the relationship between Bloomberg employees, tools, and culture.
Contextual interviews, or observations of real-world scenarios, begin with a standard introduction of the project and a few scripted questions. Each interview is an organic conversation to help us understand how employees use their calendars, how they use others’ calendars, and the techniques and strategies they employ to negotiate meetings.
Our team created the sensory association method to discover the emotion and motivation behind an employee’s personal time management strategies. Sensory association consists of asking participants to describe their calendar using adjectives that relate to the five human senses: sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste.
Our research shows that open calendar systems allow employees to collaborate more effectively, but transparency can have unforeseen ramifications. Inaccuracies on the calendar, such as meetings that no longer occur, block-off time and make an employee’s availability unclear. Due to this, employees distrust their co-workers’ calendars. This results in emails and phone calls to set up meetings instead of utilizing the tools built for this purpose, wasting time coordinating instead of collaborating.
Read how these findings informed our design