Product Strategy
UX/UI
side project
SHIPPED

GCal Wrapped — Google Calendar Analytics

Deep dive into Google Calendar analytics, specially built for college students. Gained 2K users across 60 universities and 38 countries in 2 weeks after launch.

Team

1 Developer,

1 Product Strategist/Designer

RoLE

Product Strategist/Designer

TIMELINE

April 2025 - May 2025 (1 month)

SKILLS/TOOLS

Web Design, Figma

CONTEXT

If I had to choose one product to define my college experience, it'd be Google Calendar.

Almost every single hour of my waking life is planned out as a corresponding GCal event, and I have the rather unfortunate habit of going back and adjusting event timings once they're over to maintain maximal accuracy.

So when Simon, SWE and fellow GCal Addict (this affliction is more common in college than you may think), asked me to join him in creating a Google Calendar Wrapped (recap of your semester — think Spotify Wrapped), I figured, why not?

A sneak peek (watch out — it goes by fast)!

spicing things up

Calendar analytics for college students…

… sounds rather dull, right?

When Simon and I started brainstorming, all we knew was that we were going to create a data-powered Wrapped for students' calendars. But realistically, how many college students actually care about the number of hours planned on their GCal, or how many coffee chats they've had on a particular Thursday afternoon on the Engineering Quad?

The answer is probably close to zero.

So we knew we had to do something a little different.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we highlight students' college memories in a fun, engaging way that they can laugh over with friends?

collecting data

Assumptions vs reality.

This is my Google Calendar. A bit insane, right? (Btw please don't judge the number of classes I skipped that week. Recruiting season was tough 😭)

For some reason, Simon and I thought that most people might have GCals a little similar to this (even if not so extreme). Because of this, we figured it'd be easy enough to find some interesting insights from the average GCal.

But in reality, there was a huge disparity in how people used Google Calendar. After talking to and obtaining calendar screenshots from 10+ students, we realized that some people scheduled their every waking minute (showers and lunches too!), while others had nothing on their calendars apart from their weekly class schedule.

Uh oh — was GCal Wrapped doomed?

If some people didn't even add non-class activities to their GCals, how on earth would we be able to extract any kind of vaguely interesting insight?!?

GCal Wrapped needed to be something that could be generalized across calendars, but it seemed like there were barely any common points apart from classes (and that would not be fun or engaging at all).

crisis averted

Solving our first dilemma through user analysis.

That's when it struck us — if someone barely used their GCal, would they really be using a website called GCal Wrapped?

I mean, it was pretty self evident that our product was for GCal users, so it could pretty much be assumed that anyone who tried to generate a Wrapped would have sufficient data for us to pull from, and if they didn't, they should have expected that from the start anyway.

Our users were a self-selecting crowd, and so we didn't have to worry about catering to those who didn't fit into this category.

gcal wrapping

What do college students actually find relatable?

I knew that in order for this to truly succeed, it had to be relatable, funny, and something that students would naturally want to share with their friends — forget about stats like productivity and # of hours in meetings.

But at the same time, there was obviously a limit on what could be figured out solely from someone's calendar. Although some ideas were pretty cool, they weren't technically feasible.

our initial list

paring it down

We cut down our initial brain dump to a smaller subset of ideas that were both feasible and had the potential to be funny.

lowfi ideation

Exploring with the help of v0

I'd always wanted to try v0, and this was the perfect time to explore!

I threw my thoughts into the editor, and it spat out… well… a pretty ugly prototype to be honest, but 8 or so rounds of prompting later, it had come up with some decently good ideas I hadn't thought of.

With that, I got straight to work with the lowfis. The backend was being built by Simon at the same time, so I had to be speedy with my designs. Our goal was to launch in two weeks, since right after that was finals season 😨

tick tock tick tock…

Straight to high-fis!

The clock was ticking, and I had to leave enough time for Simon to finish implementing my designs. Because of that, I decided to focus on designing interfaces and animations that were simple enough to speedily execute.

The goal wasn't visual perfection, but rather a compromise between a fun user experience and technical feasibility.

That's why, when I had the idea for a cool sheet of paper with scrolling events to visually communicate the length of one's GCal, I discarded that idea and returned to what was actually realistic — a much simpler, but still cool looking, stack of calendar events.

Too complex

DOABLE!

tick tock tick tock…

A myriad of designs

Next on the list was a landing page. In the same way, I designed this, I prioritized interactivity and crafting an experience that would make people want to stay and explore.

In addition to that, I figured, why not create some limited-edition stickers as a throwback to my sticker design days? Everyone loves laptop stickers, after all!

And last but not least, some poster designs — I decided to do some impromptu A/B testing and create different QR codes for each poster. Take a guess which one was the most effective 👀 (it was the toilet one).

the sf spirit

Launching in the middle of Figma Config!

In true SF spirit, Simon and I decided to launch GCal Wrapped during Figma Config (and inadvertently ended up missing almost half of the second part of the conference as we rushed to make the finishing touches). We had originally planned to finish up when we returned back to campus, but there was just something about the environment there.

It was a pretty quiet launch — just a couple of posts to the Slack channels we were part of.

But after Config, as Simon and I dug into some yummy waffles at a nearby café, we watched the number of live users climb. It was exhilarating and rewarding, and we knew we had to keep the momentum.

hitting a plateau…

Taking advantage of network effects.

Each time a new user generated a Wrapped, they opened up a whole new group of friends they could potentially share to. At first, this worked amazingly at Cornell — after all we had started off with our organizations of 100+ members, all of whom were more likely to share GCal Wrapped since they knew us personally.

But eventually, our growth slowed down. Although GCal Wrapped was spreading organically at Cornell, progress was becoming slower and slower at other universities. We hadn't managed to hit critical mass there before momentum died off.

So to boost our reach, we introduced a referral program to the beginning of the flow, promising our exclusive stickers to anyone who referred a certain number of friends to our website. But there was a catch: they had to refer the website to non-Cornellians.

This worked pretty well, but we soon realized we had implemented this too late. Although our analytics showed that the referral program had kicked off some new growth at previously stagnant universities, it still wasn't enough. If this had been in place before the bulk of our users had used our product, we would likely have benefited a lot more from this strategy.

A fun, engaging recap of the school semester.

Students are able to dive into their Google Calendar insights in a fun, Wrapped-style medium, highlighting their most memorable moments throughout the semester and urging them to share with friends.

REFLECTION

2,000 users, 60 universities, 38 countries, and 2 happy builders.

When Simon and I first started this project, we hoped that it would do well, but we had no idea just how fulfilling and rewarding it would be to see so many people across not only Cornell, but also the country, use GCal Wrapped.

This has undoubtedly been the most fun I've ever had working on something, and I learned an incredible amount from this process.

Building and shipping fast is fun, but intensive.

To be completely honest, the 2.5 weeks was super taxing. Working so fast was definitely exhilarating, but it was really difficult having to balance other commitments with GCal Wrapped at the same time. Next time, I think I'd budget a little more time!

Side projects are the most fulfilling to work on.

I've designed and worked on many tech products, but building something you're personally interested and invested in is a completely different feeling. This was so fulfilling, and I relished the success even more.

The best projects are born out of collaboration.

I've designed and shipped side projects before, but never with anyone else. Despite the tight timeline and late nights, working with Simon was the most fun I've ever had creating something. It's super awesome being able to bounce ideas off of someone else, and our strengths complemented each other perfectly.

WHAT's NExt?

Round 2: next semester!

Next semester, we plan to boost engagement and virality by taking advantage of the competitive nature of university students, as well as school loyalty! In the works is a school leaderboard as well as personalized school insights, and an unlock system based on the number of users from each university.

I also plan to redesign and polish many of the screens, especially now that we have much longer than 2.5 weeks. And perhaps… some new crazy insights?