Faith Made a Habit
Empowering young Christians to pray and journal continuously
Type
UI/UX Design
User Research
Visual/Branding
Date
Feb - Sept 2021
(8 months)
About
Restvo team worked with a community pastor at the Movement Church in Oakland to reimagine an online community for young Christmas to journaling their faith and pray for each other during and post-covid. The web-based app (1.0 version) has been released in September 2021 and went for Beta test and debugging process.
My Role
As the person who drove the project direction from end to end, I was able to:
Build the information architectures and user flow of all main features;
Conduct usability tests on early prototypes;
Deliver all user interface designs, iconography, and illustrations
Step 1. Pray
Step 2. Journal
Step 3. Share
Design Problem
Young Christians are losing interest in praying and journaling prayers as well as abandoning their faith in God.
According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, young adults under 40 are less likely to pray or journal prayers daily. The traditional ways of praying alone and handwriting journaling are inefficient and less motivating, which leads to discouragement and, eventually, losing faith.
Design Challenges
HMW make young Christians’ journey of praying and journaling more continuous and exciting?
02. Our solution
Pillar
your praying and journaling life can be efficient, interactive, and playful
Using "Pillar" as a metaphor - building blocks to serve the function of support, it is an app that targets young Christians with two major functions - a social platform and a journaling tool.
Only have five minutes to read? No worries!
Based on interviews with 24 Christians between 20 and 40, we learned young Christians are giving up praying because of the inefficiency and lack of motivation in traditional written journaling. However, unlike Christians over 40, the younger group desires more creative and digitalized tools to pray and journal their prayers. They are also willing to share part of journals with friends and families, learn about each other’s life updates and pray for them.
Young Christians feel traditional written journaling is boring and inefficient. When they pray by themself, they feel isolated and less motivated.
Search Option
“Handwriting doesn’t make sense for searching through them.”
Mixed Media Input
“I like to be creative when journaling. I would journal my prayers in many ways, using pictures, videos, voice recordings, etc.”
Being Busy or Lazy
“Day-to-day busy life makes it hard to remember what I have prayed for previously, or what God has done or promised.”
Wish to Share
"I am not a social media guy. But I want to have the ability to share part of my journals, like the special moment.”
According to discussions with users and the client, we defined major pain points and design principles to further envision solutions. To decide the must-haves in the MVP, we tested the early concepts with users and also took business goals and technical constraints into consideration.
MVP card sorting - click to view
Information architecture - click to view
Storyboard
1) Ana is a 30-year-old female. As a Christian, she used to journal her prayers in notebooks. She always made her prayer life a fun activity by adding bible verses and gluing in pictures. 2) She liked to pray for others and share her prayer life with friends in the Church community. However, it became difficult during the pandemic. 3) The everyday activities made it hard for Ana to journal consistently. She was eager to find a way to manage her praying life. 4) Fortunately, she found an app named Pillar. She created a prayer post called “Be healthier in 2021” and kept updating it. She could easily add pictures, bible scriptures, and other mixed media to it. 5) She invited her friends to Pillar so they could share and pray for each other. After using Pillar, her prayer life was more organized and fun.
05. Decision Making, User Testing, and Iteration
Design for diverse users with contradictory needs
We discovered two groups of users with contradicting needs during the user tests. Some only wanted to focus on their journaling experience, while others showed their passion for sharing.
According to our user needs and business goals, we decided to go for activity feeds on the home screen but prioritize personal journaling and praying experience. So, in my latest version, the activity feed is filtered by groups and the default setting is to users’ own post feed. Users can switch to the groups they are following and explore globally.
Home screen (activity feed)
Home screen > Navigate a Pillar Post
Delivering visual cues and a feeling of building up
Motivating users to pray consistently is one of our goals. I proposed to make each Pillar post look like a timeline-style journal that listed all updates in chronological order. It helps users easy to navigate and organize their posts to further reinforces the “Pillar” metaphor - building blocks to support.
I proposed a few design directions to the team and future tested with users. Both team and test users preferred V1.3 and thought it was clear and easy to read with the big dates and straightforward labels.
Slowing users down to help them make meaningful choices
What if some users just want to pray in mind without writing down anything? As requested by our users, I showed three shortcuts - pray in mind, audio prayer, and written prayer to offer flexibility. In the Pray in Mind option, my design adds an extra page and provides an immersive private space for them to focus on praying. Not just a single click like the normal “like” function. Future opportunities can include customized background images, prompts, and music.
A Pillar Post > Pray now
And more …
Create a Pillar Post
Mark as Praise
Home screen > Praise Feed
A Praise Reel
Using calming and relaxing colors, we were able to sell the identity of Pillar as a playful and peaceful app. We also opted to use the typefaces Lato and Source Serif Pro as they played the pivotal role of matching the laid-back environment that we have built in Pillar's interface. Pillar is a unique app. Users might find the new features and terminologies unfamiliar. Due to time constraints, I created fun illustrations to onboard first-time users and build connections between Pillar and them.
Establish the identity of Pillar as a playful and peaceful app and reducing confusion and uncertainties through visual storytelling
First-time user onboarding
Tutorial: how to read a Pillar post
My experience of working on Pillar was incredibly educational and rewarding. This was my first time learning Christian culture and leading the UX/UI design of a real project for an external client. I learned a lot about agile design workflow and thought about our stakeholders' needs. Whenever I came up with any new ideas, our team listened to me patiently and provided generous feedback. By the end of the project, our client told me, "thank you for making my dream come true."
This 1.0 version was released in September and. We tested the app in the team and introduced it to families, friends, and one local church community. While collecting feedback and fixing bugs, I had a few ideas in my mind for the 2.0 version.
Features of importing notes and posts from other platforms
Badges and rewards system
Customized praise reel
There might not be any app like Pillar on the market that provides a unique and playful praying experience. I am proud to be part of the project. Since Pillar has started Beta testing, I am really excited to see how our users enjoy (or complain about) Pillar and what can be improved in future versions.
