Design concept & direction for Mosque Screens
It’s been about 2 years since the first version of the mosque screen was created. There have been many iterations of the code and backend admin interface but there have not been many significant changes since the prototype designs were given by East London Mosque.
Below are the original designs from 2018, which were foundations of our final product:
Since then we have made a few tweaks here and there to improve the styling and responsiveness for handheld devices.
Future direction
Single view
We introduced a single view mode which was the result of consultation with other mosques. Since conducting our user research, we found evidence that that multiple screens did not always deliver the need for the user to see the prayer times. A lot of the time, users were left waiting for the next screen to see prayer time.
Moving towards a single view design will allow us to show concise information quickly to the user. We will be moving around some elements to allow key information to be displayed but still keep the prayer times in a consistent position.
Below is our single view concept on multiple devices and orientation, which introduces better spacing and a highlight for the next prayer time:
Accessibility
We needed to consider the accessibility of the product. The initial version has been accessible for various distances, however, there is more we can do to improve on accessibility. We could consider some of the below:
- Colour blind support
- Colour contrast (WCAG 2.1)
- Multi-Language support
There are a lot of other accessibility criteria to consider, which you can find on the link below:
Instant notifications
Instant notification allows mosques to display notifications in cases of emergency or public notices to raise attention to the worshippers.
An example could be a car blocking the road:
Admin interface / screen management
Since the beginning of the project, our main aim was to add the customisation features that every mosque requires to deliver a unique experience for its visitors.
Our goal has always been to deliver a single end to end solution for mosques so that they do not require a technical team to maintain their Mosque Screen or pay for services that are not sustainable long term.
We have built many different iterations of an “Admin screen” but we haven’t been able to meet the standards we are happy with to release a new product. We want to follow an MVP (minimum viable product) release methodology. We are looking at deploying an MVP product with a small group of mosques who can test out the new interface and give feedback.
Join the community and sign your local mosque up
You can come to talk to the community at any time, we are all one click away on our discord server: https://discord.gg/CG7frj2. The community is made up of developers, mosque staff and other supporters of the project. There is always someone to help answer any questions you may have.
You can also set up your own screen by following the instructions on our GitHub: https://github.com/Mosque-Screens/Mosque-Screen. If you have any issues setting up the screen then just message any of our community members for help. The code is open source, so if you notice any bugs, just raise a pull request and contribute back to the community.
Donations
As with any product, there are costs associated with it. If you find the product useful please donate at https://donate.mosque.tech — even a £1 a month helps a lot. If you want to see where the money is being used, have a look at our public ledger:
Thank you for reading, we will keep you updated on our progress.
