Reuters - Kalends online calendar

Kalends was set-up as an independent Reuters company to take advantage of the wealth of event related information from the worldwide Reuters Network. The site enabled users to create custom calendars with a variety of events from Business, Entertainment, Sport, Conferences and Society categories.

Frontend implemented a User Centred Design approach from the beginning of the project. Working with the Kalends team it became clear through eliciting detailed customer requirements that the initial financial focus of the site didn't appeal to the broad user base the service was intended for. This was an important factor when designing the information architecture and interaction model which was a framework for the interface look and feel developed by Howdy Pardners, a London based design & branding agency.

The service was aimed at people who wanted to find out about future events in their area from a number of different categories such as Business, Entertainment, Sport , Conferences and Society. The service also offers users a personal calendaring service, where a weekly and monthly calendar is updated automatically with a personalised selection of events.

The Project

The information architecture of the site provides the user with several different ways of accessing information. Through browsing, searching and personalising the site is structured so that relevant information can be found quickly, whilst still highlighting editorial and pictorial content.

Customers can personalise the types of events they see in their calendar through filtering by interests, dates and location. For example a user can request to see all new movie releases in their town for the next 3 months.

The solution provides day one performance and encourages users to use the calendaring application and export event information to their own offline calendar.

Throughout the site, one-click functions offer the user options to perform an action on an event such as add to a personal calendar, export to offline calendars such as MS Outlook, email events to a friend, or send SMS reminders to their mobile phone.

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