Project Overview 

So the inspiration for emojiCal really Started with my grandmother. I observed her drawing a doodle of a cat on the calendar,  in order to remind herself of a veterinarian appointment on that particular day, for her cat.
Note: My grandmother grew up in a culture where women learning to read and write was actively discouraged. 

My Role:  I served as the Lead UX Designer bringing his project's design from conception to manifestation. 

The Purpose

Create an intuitive calendar interface that can easily be used by my elderly Cuban American grandmother, with little technology experience.
  

The Challange

• The click path had to be simple with as few manual interactions as possible.
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  The interface has to be navigated by someone who is illiterate.

Empathizing & Research 

The research for this project was informed first by direct observation of what my grandmother was doing.
This was followed by an interview and a moderated study using paper prototypes where I guided her through the process of using the app. 

Road Blocks
Finding other study participants who were in her age demographic and lacked the scholastic skills of reading and writing posed a challenge. I decided to move ahead with the design process with what little data I had.

Meet the Personas

Grandma Fernandez
Age: 70+
Occupation: Retired

Grandma brought her family from Cuba to America years ago and never learned to read and write. she marks things on a calendar using symbols and "X's" in order to remind herself of events.

Brainstorming & Idea Iteration

After immersing myself in data and fully understanding what this product was and what it needed to be I started sketching various wireframes and concepts ultimately settling on the layout you see today.

Wireframes & Mockups

What I Learned

• First I learned that a writing system consisting of images or glyphs requires a large selection of icons to be really effective. Honestly developing the icons for this project could be a project in itself.
  
  
• Next, I realized I underestimated the amount of work that would go into creating an icon collection like this.
  I think I learned to use UI kits and resources online to quickly develop something that I can use to share an idea. 

Next Steps

So What I can see, is at some point support for expanded icon sets, maybe even a marketplace for icon sets.  I can even see a sharing functionality being included in a future version of this app. iteration and evolution will continue to happen I will revisit this project and the case study in the future updating everyone on changes that come of this project.

I would like to try and teach myself to use android studio and really see this come to life for my grandmother.