Vettri: a Tamil panchangam app, widgets and website

Vettri is a daily panchangam app for Tamil families in Sri Lanka, India and abroad. It answers one question people ask every day: is now a good time? I led the product design end to end. That covered the iOS app, home and Lock Screen widgets for iOS and Android, the vettri.life website, and the design system that holds them together.

Tamil families still check the panchangam before travel, a new job, a wedding date or a house move. The tools they use are printed almanacs full of tables, or astrology apps crowded with jargon, ads and fear. Three groups needed different things:

Young professionals want a yes, a wait or a better time in seconds.

Parents and elders trust the panchangam deeply and need the reasoning, in Tamil, without being frightened.

Families abroad in Toronto or London need Rahu Kalam and festival dates that follow their own sunrise, not Colombo’s.

Lead Product Designer. I owned the product requirements, user flows, wireframes, high-fidelity UI, design system, widgets, website, UX copy and developer handoff.

Flows and copy first. I mapped all ten flows as wireframes, with copy rules, before any visual design. Those were first run, daily check-in, Good time check, Ask, People, Calendar, Me, plans, marriage matching and baby names.

Answer first. Every screen leads with the verdict, then what is good now and what to avoid next. Details sit one pull or tap away.

Edge cases as real screens. Unknown birth time, no good window, offline, a sensitive question and an out-of-credits state each got a designed screen, not a fallback.

One system. I built Sandhya, a token-based design system with dawn colours, Fraunces and Sora, a matched Tamil type scale, and shared components for the app, widgets and website.

Ship and check. I wrote developer notes for every button, form and API, then audited the live site against Figma and logged the gaps.

A 24-hour strip instead of a table of times. People see the whole day at a glance: green to go, red to avoid, a marker for now.

Tamil first, not translated. The whole app switches language. Tamil type always sits 2 pt below its English pair so both scripts carry the same weight.

Plain words with sources. Ask answers in everyday language and shows what each answer is based on. For health and legal worries it points to a professional instead of guessing.

Calm by design. No fear, no paid remedies, no ads. Difficult days are framed as “go slow”, not as warnings.

Useful before sign-up. The website gives live Rahu Kalam for five towns, a birth star finder, festival dates and baby names by star, with no account needed.

82 app screens, including edge cases and empty states

21 widgets across iOS (including Liquid Glass and Tamil variants) and Android (including dynamic colour)

13 website page templates, desktop and mobile, now live at vettri.life

A full design system, product requirements for the app and website, and developer notes for handoff

Designing for two scripts and three generations changed how I think about clarity. The simplest screen wasn’t the one with the least on it. It was the one that gave the answer first and kept the reasoning close for those who wanted it.