Google’s Calendar Refresh Offers A Sparse Interface And Smart Imagery

Next up on our tour of (yet unreleased) Google app redesigns is Google Calendar. We actually got a glimpse of this redesign way back in April when Geek.com originally leaked the app as it was then. Since then, it seems that not a ton has changed, but now we can get a more complete look at the app as it stands now.

Google wants its calendar app to be all about smartness. It can pull Gmail events and invitations, detect locations, and insert imagery into events based on what kind of event it is (a feature you might have seen somewhere before).

   

The main view is called “Schedule,” and it’s fairly evident that Google wants this view to be powerful enough to handle all your needs. Things are split up into months, with their own neat parallax scrolling header illustrations. Under each month are weeks or days, and in each of those are, predictably, your events. Events are shown in big color blocks like before, but illustrations or maps are shown where appropriate. Other views (including day and week) are available in the overflow, and the header can drop down a quick “month” view.

The hamburger is an interesting place in the new Calendar app – instead of the typical hamburger paradigm of collecting the app’s primary “destinations,” the hamburger contains an interactive checklist of calendars to display. This is interesting because the same sort of colored icon is used elsewhere to select calendars, where they aren’t checkboxes.

   

The other views aren’t nearly as interesting as the schedule view – the week view predictably pulls up the whole week, but forces the phone into landscape mode.

Likewise the day view is simply a list of events with time indicators on the side, using the same color block + imagery paradigm found elsewhere. The event detail view also looks familiar, with the header image up top and details enumerated below.

  

Elsewhere, Google has touched up just about everything. There are fun details like colors named after real objects, and a condensed, super-clean event creation view. The event creation view, by the way, suggests people and places as you type out the event’s name – automatically adding guests or other relevant information.

  

One last note – there’s a new widget. There appears to only be one widget for now – a simple agenda-style scrolling widget.

Overall, the new Calendar app is a very welcomed departure from its tired old predecessor. Everything is cleaner and brighter, and the schedule view is a fresh yet sensible approach on the most powerful view in the app.