Case study · 2025
Orbit — calmer weekly planning for distributed teams
Overview
A planner people actually trust
Orbit started life as a calendar add-on, but teams used it for something subtler: deciding, together, what the week should focus on. The original interface buried that intent under dense grids and notifications.
My goal was to make the weekly plan feel like a shared, living document — quiet by default, expressive when you need it.
The problem
Density was mistaken for power
Research surfaced a recurring tension: power users wanted everything visible, while most people felt overwhelmed within a day. Usage told the same story — people opened Orbit, felt behind, and closed it.
- 72% of sessions ended without any edit to the plan.
- The most-used feature was, quietly, “collapse everything”.
- New members took over a week to understand the layout.
Calm isn’t the absence of information — it’s the confidence that nothing important is hidden from you.
Process
Prototyping the quiet state
We prototyped a “resting” view that shows only this week’s focus, with everything else one gesture away. The prototype below is the moment the concept clicked for the team — the plan reads like a sentence, not a spreadsheet.
The solution
One plan, many altitudes
The shipped design lets each person choose their altitude — from a single weekly intent down to task-level detail — without changing what teammates see. Shared truth, personal density.
Outcomes after launch
- +38% Weekly active teams
- 2.1× Plans edited per week
- −45% Time to first edit
- 4.7/5 Post-launch satisfaction
