How to turn 5–10 minutes of back-and-forth into one short flow: a manager creates a meeting with colleagues or a candidate and instantly sees who is free.
Concept, 2026Solo project≈ 1 weekFigmaGPT, Claude
5 → 3 steps
−40% in the meeting creation flow
5–10 → 2–3 min
per meeting, no emails
01Role and format
02Context and task
I noticed how much time goes into simply agreeing on a meeting and decided to design a solution myself. Meetings with colleagues and candidates are arranged over email and messengers: a manager suggests a time, someone can’t make it — and a new round of messages begins.
5–10 min
to agree on every meeting
5 steps
and back-and-forth in email and chats
Overlaps
meetings clash and get rescheduled
3+ tools
calendar, email, messenger — all scattered
Bring everything a meeting needs into one interface — participants, their availability and confirmation — so people can agree without email or messengers.
03Who it’s for and why
One form instead of a chain of emails and calls.
SimplicityOne screen
From 5–10 minutes down to 2–3 minutes per meeting.
TimeNo back-and-forth
Familiar calendar and Ant Design patterns — nothing to explain.
PatternsHints
Book a meeting fast, skip the messaging and be sure the invitation reached everyone.
04Market, personas and CJM
First I looked at how meetings are scheduled today, then defined the user roles and mapped a CJM for each.
I compared plain email with 5 popular tools: how much active time the organiser of a 3–4 person meeting spends, and whose availability they can see. It’s faster wherever availability is visible — but no tool shows it for every participant at once.
How to read:the dark part is the minimum time, the light part is the maximum.
No toolToolsTimeManager
The tools are faster because they solve only part of the job: Calendly shows one organiser’s free time, Google and Outlook only show colleagues inside the company. As soon as a candidate or an external guest joins, it’s back to emails: 5–10 minutes and a risk of rescheduling.
In TimeManager everyone’s availability is visible right in the form, and the review screen adds a minute but saves a second round of emails.
Sources: Doodle — ~8–10 min per meeting scheduled by email; Calendly, State of Scheduling 2023 — 1 in 4 people spend 3–4 hours a week scheduling. Times for the tools are my estimate for a 3–4 person meeting.
What TimeManager takes into account:
I defined two roles with different jobs. One person creates the meeting, the other receives it — and the interface has to work for both.
Then I mapped a CJM for each role — stage by stage, with the happy and the error path. Below is the key takeaway from each.
A manager returns to it dozens of times a day — users shouldn’t be sent away to separate pages.
InsightNavigation
A typo in a name or a busy slot — fix one field and move on.
InsightErrors
05Core principle and scenarios
Core principle
The calendar is the home screen. Everything else lives on top of it, so people never lose context — even if they make a mistake or change their mind.
Anna · Product ManagerCreates a meeting
Never leaves the calendarAnna never leaves the calendar: the form opens on top, and guest availability is visible right in the form. After sending she’s back in the grid and sees the new meeting straight away.
Mike · Lead DesignerReceives and accepts
Accept — 1 clickMike doesn’t have to look for anything: the invitation is already in his calendar, details open in a side panel, and he can accept the meeting in one click.
06Problem → solution → result
Each decision follows “problem → solution → why → result”.
Problem
To check meeting details or the day’s plan, people had to jump between screens and lose context.
Solution
Sidebar (today’s plan + filters by type) · calendar grid · header with navigation, search and the “Create” button. Event details open in a panel, without leaving the page.
Why
Colour labels by type (meeting, task, deadline) read faster than text, and the details panel keeps you on the screen.
Result
Any action — create, find, view — is one click away on one screen.
Problem
In typical forms date, time and time zone are scattered, and availability has to be checked somewhere else.
Solution
Date, start, end and time zone in one row. A “Consider guest availability” checkbox. Autocomplete for colleagues. Repeating meetings. “Back” closes the form without losing context.
Why
Meeting time is a single object and should be seen as a whole. Checking availability inside the form removes the very reason for back-and-forth.
Result
The whole meeting comes together on one screen, without hunting for a slot in other tools.
Problem
One error in a field often resets the whole form or only shows up after submitting.
Solution
Empty required fields → a hint right under the field. A title over 100 characters → a 100/100 counter. A busy participant → the nearest time free for everyone. Save failed → a red toast, the data stays.
Why
People fix one field and move on — without losing what they already entered.
Result
All 6 errors were designed before development, and none of them resets the entered data.
Problem
An invitation with a wrong time goes to every participant — and a new round of messages begins.
Solution
A “Data verification” screen shows everything before “Schedule”. Success → calendar, the meeting is already in the grid, green toast. Error → stay on review, red toast.
Why
A separate “Done” screen is an extra step. The best confirmation is seeing your meeting in the calendar.
Result
Typos are caught before sending, and after success people are right back in their working context.
07UI kit on Ant Design
I built on Ant Design: ready-made inputs, date pickers and selects speed up both design and development. The time saved went into UX logic.
Colours, Roboto typography, spacing and radii — one base for every screen.
ColoursRobotoSpacing
Inputs, date pickers, selects, toasts — built on Ant Design with my own styles.
Ant DesignVariants
Default, hover, focus, filled, error, disabled — for every form field.
DefaultFocusError
08Calendar, form, review
09What changed and what’s ready
In one week — from the problem to a flow ready for development: what changed for the user and what’s ready.
Before → after
Steps to a meeting
53
Time per meeting
5–10 min2–3 min
Tools to agree on a time
3+1
About the numbers: the product wasn’t launched, so this is a scenario-based estimate, not a measurement.
Ready for development
10Takeaways and next steps
One extra click or an unclear error is enough to send people back to email. The simpler the flow, the more it actually gets used. The short timeline (≈ a week) made me pick the essentials early: one key flow and its errors.
A quick test on wireframes would have caught the weak spots before the UI was drawn.
Early testing
Time to create a meeting and the share of reschedules — then the result would be a measurement, not an estimate.
UX metrics
The flow ends at sending, but in real life meetings are often moved and cancelled.
Edge cases
What I’ll do
How I’ll know it worked
Task: create a meeting with three colleagues, one of whom is busy. I watch the time, the errors and where people hesitate.
Meetings get created in under 3 minutes, without hints
Availability comes from the calendar people already use, and the invitation lands there too — no moving meetings by hand.
No complaints like “I can’t see the meeting in my calendar”
The organizer sees who received and accepted the invitation. Participants get a reminder before the meeting.
The organizer never has to ask “did you get the invite?”
Accept, decline or propose another time right from the notification on the phone.
Replying to an invitation takes one action
I’m happy to walk you through the process and decisions — get in touch.
