HP’s SmartCalendar software serves as a “control panel” for busy families. Built for the TouchSmart PC, the first touch-screen PC designed for family use, SmartCalendar turns the refrigerator door into a feature-stocked household dashboard. SmartCalendar takes care of the simple things. Families can schedule events, write notes, record voice messages for each other, and more. By enabling you to upgrade your post-it notes or wall calendars without losing the basics, SmartCalendar keeps your family on the same page in a fun and interactive way. Monsoon Company worked with Frog Design and HP to conceptualize and build the HP SmartCalendar. In thinking about the project, HP was clear that its competition was not Microsoft Outlook or the latest feature-rich calendar application. Instead, it was the paper-based process that most people use today. Every step of the way, Monsoon asked ourselves: will this feature make the user want to quit and pull out a sticky note? If so, we cut it out or cleaned it up. Designing this kind of useful simplicity was especially challenging because we were developing for Microsoft Vista before the operating system was officially released. But our perseverance and clear plan paid off, ultimately leading to a product that impressed even the uber-geeks at Microsoft. CNET, among others, had this to say about the SmartCalendar’s debut: “It couldn’t be simpler to use…We can easily imagine a busy family using the SmartCalendar as an organizational hub to keep track of various members’ comings and goings.” HP partnered with Microsoft to begin working on the SmartCalendar months before Vista was released. Monsoon worked alongside Microsoft programmers on alpha and beta releases of Vista code. Although the going was tough, Monsoon emerged with industry-leading knowledge of WPF, XAML, and the detailed workings of the Vista OS.