JesusU

Gaining Context

User research | Personas | Problem statements | Competitive analysis | User Journey Maps

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User Research

• What problems plague the modern church today?
• What areas exist where technology and community fail to operate synergistically?
• Where can we meet the needs of knowing (or unknowing) individuals and churches?
• Why bother taking on seemingly mammoth challenges?
• How can we change the landscape of Christian discipleship for the better?

These are some questions we asked during the course of this exploration in design thinking and implementation.

We started off by testing our hypothesis: The global Church as it stands, needs help. Communities are disjointed, divisive and fragmented. We realize diversity, while good, presents many challenges we needed to overcome if this product was going to have any reasonable chance in the real-world.

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We realize diversity, while good, presents many challenges we needed to overcome if this product was going to have any reasonable chance in the real-world.

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We interviewed over 20 participants who graciously volunteered their time to share insights, experiences, and opinions surrounding the topic of the Church as a whole and their walk with God.

We realized we bit off a bit more than we could chew in a reasonable amount of time, since jotting down long answers for over 30 responses and parsing the data was tedious and complicated.

We succeeded at doing just that, and realized that the interviews themselves were enough to build a more complete understanding so we could move forward with our idea more confidently. The interviews confirmed our suspicions and revealed even more insight into the current state of the Church which we could use later on in the design process.

After interviewing twenty-three participants with over thirty questions, we confirmed much of what we already suspected: Most people are dissatisfied with the current state of the Church in the west.

We realized through these interviews too, that although many people see many things wrong with the prevailing theme of the Church today, some are unsure of how they can make a meaningful impact for positive change.

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Personas

We created personas outlining the major details revealed during the interviews which helped us consolidate major themes and points of conflict we could potentially seek to solve.

User Stories

Problem Statements

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Competitive Analysis

Competitive audits revealed major gaps in the market that allowed us to build the kind of solution we were wanting to build all along. No app or website came close to solution we had in mind or the level of quality of good experience and design we wanted to offer. This was good news! There was great opportunity to meet a need in a way people may have never thought about.

We discovered a huge gap for useful discipleship experiences in the Church space. When we did find good and playful UX, we couldn’t find much in the area of platforms encouraging real-life interaction. Bingo.

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User Journey Maps

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Our Journey Maps highlight and illustrate main flow and challenges for those who choose serving rather than "consuming" messages, talks, and relationships in a public setting. There is a building of rapport that necessarily has to occur for relationships to work deeply and effectively. This is the main pain-point for each persona—each with separate nuances.

Participants also encounter scheduling times and places to meet between each other. These are also areas for growth and improvement in the current UX. Along with scheduling is the need to track progress, challenges, and goals of other members to better equip, encourage, and build them for further service in their lives. Few things speak more "love" than genuinely following up for the good of another. This is what we seek to enable, encourage, and grow in the new UX.

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Starting the design

Ideation | Wireframes | Low-fidelity prototype | Usability study

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Ideation

There are many different ways to display available courses, provide a way to enroll, and manage a classroom. The best design will use familiar UX concepts, facilitate immersiveness, and encourage user participation.

We then started the design brainstorming portion of the project, utilizing Crazy Eights to generate quick sketches of ideas to spark the beginning of our designs.

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Wireframes

Next, we sketched over fifty wireframes on paper, selecting the best elements and consolidating them to create the best solution we saw.

We recreated each consolidated wireframe for our main user flow digitally in Figma, referencing back to our paper sketches and freely trying new ideas, keeping in mind our interviews and the needs and desires of those who would be interested in using our product.

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Low-Fidelity Prototype

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Usability Study

Parameters

Study type: Moderated usability study
Location: Phoenix, in-person
Participants: 6 participants
Length: 30-60 minutes

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Findings

We found common trends in the usability data, such as:

• The bottom carousel's function on the enrolled class page proved to be confusing.
• Multiple calendars were confusing to use and understand easily
• Some icons conveyed different meanings to different users

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Refining the designs

Mockups | High-fidelity prototype | Accessibility

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Mockups

We iterated on the low fidelity prototype and began design on the high-fidelity mockups.

Originally, there were two separate calendars for classes and assignments. Through user feedback, we consolidated the two into one, and consolidated the assignment track view to its own separate screen. We fixed lack of a confirmation clarity when enrolling in a course and having multiple calendars, by creating a new confirmation page and consolidating the calendars.

The biggest problem overcome was the confusion around the carousel class slider on the enrolled page. This is changed so that tapping—rather than swiping through—accesses class details.

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High-Fidelity Prototype

View High-fidelity prototype

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Accessibility considerations

Colors needed to be used for more clarity, instead of strictly informative. This way people who cannot see color or who want to use a grayscale screen can still efficiently use the product. Contrast needed to be maintained in text to allow people to read and act on information easily. A confirmation page and progress indication throughout the enrollment process was added and improved. Usability testing showed increased clarity in enrollment was needed.

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Building the Responsive Website

Information architecture | Responsive design

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Next we sought to create a fully responsive web-app for the product and discovered that the website would need to serve people differently. We directed our focus on the onboarding and marketing of our product, while giving individuals and churches opportunities to search for available courses and create accounts, since these would lessen the friction and serve as a way to share offerings transparently in a way that would give users confidence and build rapport between us and them.

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Information Architecture

Our sitemap was created with the knowledge that at least four different types of users would be using theplatform.

Responsive Design

Starting with mobile-first, we went through a brainstorming, lo-fi, and high-fi process setting up wireframes and mockups as prototypes for testing when the time came to do so.

Challenges in generating responsive designs included deciding the best font-sizes and spacing to employ as device size varied. Functional and immersive design was a top priority.

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Moving forward

Takeaways | Next steps

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Takeaways

Impact on people

“I’m really excited for this to work, because it has a great interface!”
—Claire B.
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Key learning point

Don’t underestimate usability testing. Even when we had thought out our designs extensively, we still discovered huge areas for improvement through the usability tests.

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Next steps

• Build out the website and app.
• Soft-Launch the product and pitch to churches.
• Prepare for funding.
• Further research and usability testing
• Creating more user-flows for screens for coaches and teachers
• Development of the website and app

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Excited to see where this project is headed in the near future!

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Let's connect!
zachary@dewfire.com

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