#1 Google Calendar — Floating Action Button

It’s important for you to know why I’m starting One Little Detail. As a sucker for Third Person Shooters and Open World Games, I was always interested to explore the Easter Eggs developers sneak into the game — be it Grand Theft Auto or Batman Arkham Series. This trait of finding details or adding details wherever possible is still stuck to me to this day where my procrastination has moved from gaming to other things such as binge watching TV series and exploring various apps and products on the store and every-time I notice the attention to detail, I love it.

The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail — Charles R. Swindoll

The above quote speaks well on how important detail is. Especially in a markets like India which are extremely competitive and are rarely about finding perfection and more about shipping things quicker. The problem is, when you ship things rapidly — you miss out on details.

Today, we have Google Calendar. If you’re busy and organized you know you use it. Although the desktop interface isn’t really that aesthetically pleasing, the mobile interface is brilliant!

Teo Yu Siang wrote an excellent article back in 2015 about why the Floating Action Button (FAB) is bad User Experience Design. Although, I personally love the FAB and do not entirely agree on the article — there are a few things that stand true.

Notice that innocent FAB just sitting around doing nothing but having the longest of wavelengths with the color Red?

Faiz Malkani brought an amazing observation to me over lunch one day about how the FAB in Google Calendar behaves weirdly with an animation which we had never seen any other app do before.

Notice how the touches to the middle right of the screen make the FAB spin.

Interestingly, on further thought, it’s not weird.

The Detail:

If you’re tapping on a white space in the “Schedule” view of Google Calendar — the FAB animates to tell you that the right way to add an event is to tap on the FAB itself.

Does it lack the detail of conveying the same? Yes.

But the thought matters so much — adding the animation to convey that on tapping the white-space will not add an event and instead, you should tap on the FAB and add it makes a lot more sense with that eye catchy animation.