FSR+ Calendar Redesign
from dated and disconnected to operationally intelligent
Role: Lead UX Designer & Researcher
Company: Ford Motor Company (via VML)
Timeline: Several Months
Scope: Calendar redesign for Ford's Mobile Service Reservation platform (FSR+)
Impact at a Glance
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Transformed a generic scheduling grid into a real-time operational command center for service advisors
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Surfaced critical appointment status, technician assignments, and service context directly on calendar tiles
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Preserved the horizontal calendar orientation users depended on — backed by research and competitive benchmarking
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Eliminated pagination in favor of a full-day scrollable view, improving daily planning efficiency
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Introduced a KPI layer giving service advisors immediate visibility into daily performance metrics
My Role & Scope
I served as the Lead UX Designer and Researcher for the calendar redesign, owning the research strategy, information architecture, tile hierarchy, and UX direction throughout. A UI designer executed the visual design in close collaboration with me. I was responsible for:
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Conducted competitive analysis and benchmarking across scheduling tools in analogous operational industries
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Led user interviews and usability research with service advisors to understand daily workflows and pain points
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Defined the information hierarchy for appointment tiles — what to show, what to cut, and in what order
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Advocated for and defended the horizontal calendar orientation against internal pushback
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Collaborated closely with the UI designer on visual execution while owning all UX decisions
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Partnered with Product and Engineering to align on scope and ensure implementation fidelity
The Problem
The existing FSR+ calendar was functional in the narrowest sense — it showed appointments on a grid. But for service advisors managing a fleet of mobile technicians across a full day of appointments, functional wasn't enough.
The tiles told you almost nothing useful. Appointment status wasn't visible at a glance. There was no way to tell which technician was assigned, what services were being performed, or which appointments needed immediate attention. The calendar paginated rather than scrolled, cutting off the afternoon entirely and forcing advisors to navigate away from their primary view to get a complete picture of the day.
The UI was visually dated — a dark navy header, generic vehicle labels, and color-coded left borders with no consistent meaning. It looked like the first version of something that had never been revisited.
For a tool that service advisors rely on to manage real-time field operations, the gap between what the calendar showed and what users actually needed to do their jobs was significant.
The Real Challenge
The most important design decision in this project wasn't about the tiles or the KPIs. It was about orientation.
The UI design team wanted to redesign the calendar as a vertical layout — a common pattern in consumer scheduling apps and one that felt more modern at first glance. The problem was that it was wrong for this specific use case and this specific user.
Service advisors manage multiple vans running simultaneous appointments across a full working day. The mental model is horizontal — time moves left to right, vehicles stack top to bottom. A vertical layout would have collapsed that spatial relationship and forced advisors to scroll in a direction that worked against how they actually think about their day.
I held the line — and I held it with research. Competitive benchmarking of scheduling tools in analogous industries, combined with direct user feedback from service advisors, confirmed that horizontal was the right call. Users didn't want a consumer-style calendar. They wanted a dispatch view — something closer to an air traffic control screen than a Google Calendar.
That distinction shaped every decision that followed.
From Insights to Product Decisions
Every design decision traced directly back to something a service advisor told us or something we observed in how they actually managed their day.
Insight → Decision → Impact
Insight: Service advisors needed to assess the full day at a glance — across all vans, all time slots, all appointment statuses simultaneously.
Decision: Preserved horizontal orientation with vehicles as rows and time as the x-axis, extending the view to cover the full working day without pagination.
Impact: Advisors could scan the entire day's operations in a single view, identifying gaps, conflicts, and urgent items without navigating away.
Insight: Tile content in the original calendar was generic and undifferentiated — nearly identical information regardless of appointment type or status.
Decision: Redesigned tile hierarchy to surface customer name, appointment status, VIN, service address, phone number, and service type codes as the primary information layer.
Impact: Advisors could immediately identify what each appointment involved and what action, if any, was required — without opening the appointment detail.
Insight: Status visibility was the most critical operational need — advisors needed to know instantly which appointments were Scheduled, Pending, or flagged for attention.
Decision: Introduced prominent, color-coded status labels on every tile with consistent meaning across the calendar.
Impact: System failures, pending approvals, and confirmed appointments became immediately distinguishable at a glance — reducing the cognitive load of managing a full day of field operations.
Insight: Travel time between appointments was invisible in the original design, creating a false picture of van availability.
Decision: Introduced travel time blocks between appointments as a distinct visual element on the timeline.
Impact: Service advisors gained an accurate picture of true availability, reducing overbooking and improving scheduling decisions.
Insight: Managers and advisors had no performance context within the calendar — KPIs lived in a separate reporting tool.
Decision: Introduced a collapsible KPI bar above the calendar surfacing daily utilization, avg. travel time, avg. repair time, reservations per vehicle, and geofence compliance.
Impact: Performance data moved from a separate dashboard into the daily workflow, giving advisors real-time operational context without leaving their primary view.
Horizontal Over Vertical — Holding the Line
The decision to preserve horizontal orientation was the most consequential of the project — and the most contested. Consumer scheduling conventions pointed toward vertical. User research and competitive benchmarking pointed toward horizontal. I chose to trust the users over the convention, and the final design reflects that. A service advisor managing four vans across a ten-hour day needs a dispatch view, not a calendar app.
Tile Information Hierarchy
The original tiles showed an RO number, a name, and an address — and that was largely it. Redesigning the hierarchy required asking a deceptively simple question: what does a service advisor need to know about this appointment without opening it? The answer, drawn directly from user interviews, was: who, what status, where, how to reach them, and what work is being done. Everything else was secondary.
Travel Time as a First-Class Element
Making travel time visible on the calendar wasn't just a visual decision — it was an operational one. When travel time is invisible, advisors make scheduling decisions based on incomplete information. Surfacing it directly on the timeline made the gap between appointments honest and actionable.
The KPI Bar
Bringing performance metrics into the calendar view was a deliberate choice to reduce context switching. Advisors were previously toggling between the calendar and QlikSense for performance data. The collapsible KPI bar kept them in one place while giving them the numbers that mattered most for daily decision-making.
Slide-Out Reservation Panel: Depth Without Disruption
Service advisors frequently needed deeper appointment context — vehicle details, service codes, customer information, drive time — without losing sight of the full day's schedule. Navigating to a separate detail page meant losing the calendar view entirely and re-orienting every time they returned. A slide out panel was created to surface the full reservation details across four tabs, advisors can review, edit and act on any appointment without leaving their primary view.
Progressive disclosure at its most practical: show what's needed on the tile, reveal everything else on demand, never make the user start over.
Key Design Decisions
What I Learned
The most useful thing I did on this project wasn't design — it was benchmarking. When the conversation about orientation came up, having concrete examples from analogous industries — dispatch tools, logistics platforms, field service management software — made the case in a way that opinion alone couldn't. Research doesn't just inform design. Sometimes it protects it.
I also learned that "not that deep" projects often have more design thinking in them than they appear to. The calendar redesign looks like a visual refresh. Underneath it is a set of deliberate decisions about operational mental models, information hierarchy, and what it actually means to manage people in the field. That's worth showing.