Overall UXE Score
8.64
16 jurors · +0.5 vs season average
- Recognition
- Official Selection
- Recognized
- 9 Sept 2026
- Season
- Quarter 3, 2026
- Studio
- Tessel, Montréal
- Categories
- Product Experience · SaaS · AI & Emerging Experience
- Platforms
- Web, Desktop, iOS
01/Overview
A calendar that schedules deep work as seriously as meetings and explains every automatic change it makes.
Kairo treats focus time as a first-class event. It finds the hours you work best, defends them from new meetings, and moves them — never deletes them — when something urgent lands.
Every automatic change is explained in one line (“Moved Deep work to 14:00 because Design crit ran long”) and can be undone with a single keystroke.
The week view is dense but calm: colour encodes calendar type, not urgency, and the current-time line is the only accent on screen.
- Client
- In-house product
- Audience
- Makers — designers, engineers and writers — in meeting-heavy companies
- Industry
- Productivity
- Platforms
- Web, Desktop, iOS
- Status
- Live since April 2026
- Markets
- Worldwide
- Languages
- 2 — English, French
02/Honors
Recognized by the editors.
Recognition
Official Selection
A reference in its field — consistently excellent across all seven criteria.
Conferred by the editors on 9 Sept 2026 · minimum UXE 8.0
Awards · Quarter 3, 2026
Season results- Product ExperienceEntered
01 / 12 · SaaS
- AI & Emerging ExperienceEntered
11 / 12
Competing in Q3 2026. Entries close 30 Sept 2026; results are announced 15 Oct 2026.
03/Jury verdict
In the jury’s words.
“Kairo shows how automation should feel: visible, explained and reversible. Every change comes with a reason and an undo.”
Mateo Álvarez
Interaction Designer, Lumbre · Mexico
On behalf of 16 jurors
04/Score breakdown
How the jury scored it.
- Overall UXE Score+0.5 vs Q3 2026 average
- 8.64
- Strongest criterionUsability
- 8.9
- Jury agreementaverage spread ±0.46
- Moderate
- Jurorsof Q3 2026’s panel
- 16
- 8.9+0.6
Usability
Can people complete what they came to do — efficiently, confidently and without error?
- 8.4+0.3
Information Architecture
Is content organized, labeled and navigable in the way people actually think?
- 8.6+0.2
UI & Consistency
Is the visual language coherent and purposeful across every screen and state?
- 8.8+0.6
Interaction & Feedback
Does every action respond clearly, promptly and meaningfully?
Jury noteEvery automatic move is announced in one sentence with a one-key undo.
- 8.9+0.8
Performance
Does it feel fast — perceived and measured — on real devices and networks?
Jury noteRenders a 500-event week in under 40 ms; it never feels like a web app.
- 8.2+0.4
Accessibility
Can everyone use it, including people relying on assistive technology?
Jury noteStrong keyboard story; drag-to-resize still lacks a single-pointer alternative on iOS.
- 8.7+0.4
Learnability
How quickly does a first-time user become a confident one?
Scores are the mean of 16 jurors. Ticks mark the Q3 2026 average across 6 recognized projects.
05/The jury
16 ballotsEvery vote, on the record.
Each juror scored Kairo independently, from 1 to 10 on every criterion. Nothing is weighted by seniority and no score is discarded — the published result is simply their mean.
One juror Jury mean
| Juror | Usab | IA | UI | Inter | Perf | A11y | Learn | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kwabena AsanteService Design Lead, Adinkra Digital · GH | 9.6 | 9.0 | 9.7 | 9.6 | 9.7 | 9.1 | 8.9 | 9.37 |
| Olivia GrantVP of Design, Harbor & Pine · US | 9.4 | 9.4 | 8.5 | 9.2 | 9.8 | 8.6 | 8.7 | 9.09 |
| Mateo ÁlvarezVerdictInteraction Designer, Lumbre · MX | 9.5 | 9.2 | 9.1 | 9.0 | 8.8 | 8.3 | 8.8 | 8.96 |
| Nina PetrovaDesign Director, Graphit · BG | 8.7 | 9.0 | 8.9 | 8.4 | 9.2 | 8.2 | 9.5 | 8.84 |
| Marco BelliniSenior Product Designer, Studio Vetro · IT | 9.1 | 9.1 | 9.0 | 8.7 | 8.6 | 8.3 | 8.6 | 8.77 |
| Ana CostaInclusive Design Researcher, Maré Digital · PT | 9.0 | 8.3 | 8.9 | 8.9 | 8.8 | 8.3 | 9.1 | 8.76 |
| Min-jun ChoDesign Lead, Seoul Form · KR | 8.7 | 7.9 | 9.2 | 9.1 | 9.6 | 8.3 | 8.5 | 8.76 |
| Tomasz WójcikMotion Design Lead, Kadr Studio · PL | 8.9 | 8.4 | 7.9 | 8.8 | 9.2 | 9.2 | 8.8 | 8.74 |
| Mei TanakaUX Research Lead, Hoshi Labs · JP | 8.8 | 8.4 | 8.5 | 9.1 | 8.8 | 8.3 | 8.9 | 8.69 |
| Sofía MarínAccessibility Lead, Clarosol · ES | 9.1 | 8.5 | 8.4 | 9.0 | 8.8 | 7.4 | 9.5 | 8.67 |
| Priya RamanHead of Product Design, Tessera Cloud · IN | 9.0 | 8.1 | 8.0 | 8.8 | 8.7 | 7.7 | 8.9 | 8.46 |
| Amara NwosuDesign Director, Kestrel & Vale · GB | 8.8 | 7.9 | 8.3 | 8.5 | 8.9 | 7.7 | 8.3 | 8.34 |
| Zara HassanHead of UX, Sahel Pay · AE | 8.3 | 8.3 | 8.7 | 8.3 | 8.2 | 8.0 | 8.6 | 8.34 |
| Liam O’ConnorAccessibility Engineer, Cardinal Web · IE | 8.7 | 7.9 | 8.3 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 7.9 | 8.3 | 8.30 |
| Lukas BrennerPrincipal Product Designer, Feldwerk · DE | 8.7 | 7.6 | 8.0 | 8.7 | 8.6 | 8.3 | 8.1 | 8.29 |
| Ravi MenonWeb Performance Engineer, Quickline · SG | 8.1 | 7.4 | 8.2 | 8.2 | 8.2 | 7.6 | 7.7 | 7.91 |
| Jury mean | 8.9 | 8.4 | 8.6 | 8.8 | 8.9 | 8.2 | 8.7 | 8.64 |
| Spread (σ) | ±0.39 | ±0.58 | ±0.49 | ±0.36 | ±0.47 | ±0.48 | ±0.46 | ±0.35 |
marks each juror’s area of expertise. Deeper tint, higher score.
01
Submitted
17 Aug
Entry received, free of charge
02
Jury scoring
23 Aug – 8 Sept
16 independent ballots
03
Recognized
9 Sept 2026
Official Selection
04
Awards
Results 15 Oct 2026
Competing in Q3 2026
06/Screens
1 screenThe product, screen by screen.
07/Case study
From problem to proof.
The challenge
Smart calendars that auto-schedule felt like a loss of control: events moved silently, and people stopped trusting their own week.
The approach
Tessel made every automation explainable and reversible, and gave users a weekly focus goal rather than a fully automated schedule.
Research
Calendar audits
Anonymised calendars from 140 volunteers
Wizard-of-Oz study
Human-simulated automation with 18 participants for 2 weeks
Usability testing
4 rounds, 36 sessions
Key insights
- 01
People accept automation when they can see why it happened.
- 02
Deleting focus time feels like failure; moving it feels like planning.
- 03
A goal (“15 hours this week”) motivates more than a rule.
Outcomes
+5.2 h
Protected focus per week
median, after 6 weeks
96%
Automations kept
not undone by users
4.8
App Store rating
2,100 reviews
Outcomes are reported by the submitting team and reviewed by the jury.
08/Accessibility & performance
Built for everyone, on any device.
Accessibility
WCAG 2.2 AA
Audited by In-house audit, March 2026
8.2
Jury
- Every calendar action has a keyboard shortcut and a command palette entry
- Screen readers announce events as sentences, including conflicts
- Calendar colours meet 3:1 against the grid and carry text labels
Known gaps
- Drag-to-resize has no single-pointer alternative yet on iOS
Performance
4 of 4 within budget
MacBook Air M1 and Moto G Power on 4G, lab median
8.9
Jury
| Metric | Measured | Budget |
|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint | 1.3 s (within budget) | ≤ 2.5 s |
| Interaction to Next Paint | 62 ms (within budget) | ≤ 200 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0.00 (within budget) | ≤ 0.1 |
| Week render (500 events) | 38 ms (within budget) | ≤ 50 ms |
Within budget Over budget
09/Design system
Tempo, the system behind Kairo.
- System
- Tempo
- Components
- 48
- Design tokens
- 164
Color
- #FF6B4A
Coral
- #1C1B1A
Ink
- #3D6B3A
Focus
- #2E5AA8
Meeting
- #6A3FA8
Workshop
Typography
Inter
Interface
Google Fonts
UX patterns
- Calendar
- Automation with undo
- Command palette
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Goals
10/Credits
The people who made it.
Studio
Tessel
Montréal, Canada
Productivity tools that treat attention as the scarcest resource.
- Founded
- 2020
- Team
- 11–50
- Recognized
- 1
Team
- Maxime TremblayFounder & Product Designer
- Sarah NguyenInteraction Designer
- Olivier GagnonEngineering Lead
- Laura ChenUX Researcher
- Client
- In-house product
- Industry
- —
Built with
- React
- Tauri
- Swift
- CalDAV
- Google Calendar API
- Figma
→/More from the showcase
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UXE
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