Lakshmi's Junior Designers Schedule

I open my phone in the morning and see, in big letters and faces, which of my junior designers is coming to the studio today.

Who this is for

Lakshmi Narayan is seventy and has been designing wedding invitations and shop boards in Mysore for forty-one years. Her studio is one room on the first floor above a saree shop on Vinoba Road. Three junior designers work with her: Anushka, Faiz and Deepika, none of them full time, all of them on different days. At twenty to eight, sitting with her coffee before she calls the auto, she wants to know who is climbing those stairs today and who is not.

How the job is done today

There is a long diary on the table with days pencilled in and rubbed out. The juniors do not write in it. They message her at eleven at night saying they have a college submission on Thursday, and by morning that message has slid up past four forwarded photos and a payment screenshot. So she reaches the studio at nine, unlocks it, waits, and at half past nine starts ringing people one by one to ask where they are. Twice this month she has bought three vada pav and eaten two of them herself.

The screens, in order

1. Today — The screen she opens first, showing large photographs of the juniors coming in today with their names under them and whether it is a morning or a full day.
2. The week — One swipe from today, so she can see on Monday that Faiz is only free on Friday and plan the printer visit around it.
3. Change a day — Where she taps a face to mark someone away or taps an empty slot and taps another face to put them in, without typing anything.
4. The juniors' week — The same week seen on Anushka's, Faiz's and Deepika's own phones, where each of them can say they cannot come on a day so it reaches Lakshmi before the night message does.
5. The people — The rarely visited screen where a new junior is added once with a name, a phone number and a photo, and where a photo can be replaced when someone cuts their hair.

What it keeps track of

• The juniors — name, a photo big enough to recognise, phone number, the days they normally come
• The days — which day, who is expected, morning or full day, coming or not coming, and who changed it last

The one decision that matters

Whether Lakshmi's side of the app is filled in or tapped. A proper roster form with a date picker, a dropdown of names and a notes box would be the ordinary way, and it would be unusable for her before eight in the morning without her reading glasses. Faces and taps is the right way: a photo the size of a matchbox and a name in letters she can read across the room, and every change made by tapping a face rather than choosing from a list. The single exception is adding a new junior, which needs a name and a number typed once. That happens maybe twice a year, sitting down, glasses on, and it is fair to make that one screen the slow one.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out leave approval, hours worked and anything to do with paying them. Lakshmi already knows what she owes each of them and settles it by UPI on the first. If the app starts counting hours it becomes a thing she has to keep correct, and the moment it is wrong once she will stop trusting the morning screen too. It only has to answer one question: who is coming today.

How you would know it worked

Lakshmi stops making the half past nine phone calls. A month goes by where she has never once unlocked the studio expecting Anushka and found Deepika at the door, and she buys exactly the right number of vada pav.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I am a designer in Mysore and three young designers work with me at my studio on different days. Please make me a phone app where the first thing I see is today's date and big photographs of whoever is coming today, name under each photo in large letters, and the words morning or full day. I should swipe to see the rest of the week. If someone is not coming I tap their photo and mark them away, and if I tap an empty space I add someone by tapping their face, no typing. Each of them should see the same week on their own phone and be able to say they cannot come on a day, which shows up on mine. I also need one place to add a new team member later, with their name, phone number and a photo big enough for me to recognise them. My eyes are not good, so make everything very large.