Recreating Elevation Church Mobile App
A UX/UI Design case study for Churches
I started my UX design journey a little bit over a year ago, up until then I had been purely doing brand identity design. Although I started UX design studies last year, it wasn’t until a few months ago I started practicing. My first project was a bank app, that can be viewed here.
Background of Study
Mobile apps and the internet have been around for some time now, regardless of this fact not a lot of Churches embraced their rise, that is until the last 5 years.
While a lot of Churches have embraced the idea of having websites, and even social media pages, the number of them in possession of mobile apps are not a lot. Even from my days of programming, I’ve always had a desire to build something for my community.
So when I started experience design, it came as one of the assignments to self, but instead of creating a project from scratch, I decided to remodel something that already existed. As one of the foremost Churches at embracing technology, teaching the good news to people, and making good use of design principles, Elevation Church became my case study.
Problem to be Solved
Though an avid follower of their online community, I’ve never used the Elevation App in the past, their YouTube channel has always been able to deliver for me.
When I first decided to download their app on a mobile device, I went to the reviews section, which is something I do a lot when downloading new apps, I couldn’t help but notice the 1-star ratings the app received, fortunately, the reviewers gave reasons for their displeasure.
There were lots of complaints, sliding from the 1-star review community to the 2-star review community, but certain problems were consistently mentioned, and they included:
The user wants to be able to do audio-only, instead of streaming the video, for some it was data related, for others it was because they listened while being busy driving, or doing some other activity.
The user wants to be able to playback a sermon right where they left off the last session they had.
The user wants to be able to download the desired sermon for offline listening later on.
The user wants to be able to continue listening without being on the app, the user wants to minimize the app, and still listen to a sermon.
What is a sermon without notes? A particular user complained about not being able to take notes
It is no news that one of that the usability and usefulness of every digital product is determined by the client, your products should be created to solve their problems.
Aim of Project
The aim of this project/case study was to build a product that satisfies the needs of the users by:
Creating a more intuitive experience for users, beyond watching sermons, they should feel like a part of the community.
Creating a product that solves the problems mentioned by the users
My Solution
Jakob’s law states that
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
Sadly, in the world today, I personally haven’t seen any mobile app made for a Church with excellent experience, I’m open to corrections. I had to draw inspiration mainly from YouTube’s mobile app, it is an app millions of people use.
After much deliberation and sketches on how to improve the experience for streaming sermons, and adding the audio feature, since this topped the list of complaints, I came up with this interface
Sorry, no video prototypes.
I designed my interface with an option to listen to an audio format by preference when selected, it takes a user to the second interface. I also made the screen void of the bottom menu which is present in the current interface, to avoid unnecessary distractions.
I also made available several other options, like the favorite action, downloads action, and a notes action. This provides a medium for a user to save a sermon for future purposes, download for offline listening, and taking notes when needed.
For the landing sermon screen, I created two options
Why I created separate options is because users mentioned about the lack of a playback option, it can be frustrating looking for a sermon you were watching, and taking the sermon to the exact time you left it.
Option 1 is for new users and continuing users who were not previously viewing a particular sermon. Option 2 is for those who were previously watching a video
Another feature I added is the horizontal scroll and sectioning of sermons. Currently, users just get to see messages sorted by recent uploads. Making the product more intuitive should provide users with more than that, filters that would compel users include most viewed messages, message series, different teachers, and recommended messages.
Summary
What I’ve done here is a little step to better the experience of users, your product is not for you, it’s for them, and it will do a whole lot of good when you take their reviews seriously.
Kudos to Elevation for embracing technology, I’ve always been a fan of their digital designs.
I urge the Church body to follow in their footsteps and reach a wider audience that way.
This is my first medium post, so I’d be glad to read your views on this case study. So please drop your comments, corrections are welcome, thanks.
