Selah
A mobile prayer journal app that enables and encourages users to keep record of their prayers and gratitudes for self reflection and spiritual well-being.
My Role
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
Project Manager
Platform
iOS Mobile App
Duration
Jul - Aug 2024
3 weeks
According to a 2020 Premier Christian news poll, 38% of Christians are likely to pray regularly, compared to 52% of people from other faith groups.
Prayer is one of the most emphasized spiritual disciplines of Christianity mentioned in the Bible. Yet statistics show that many Christians struggle to make it a regular habit.
GOAL
Design a mobile app that increases accessibility to prayer, provides an organized and enjoyable way to pray, and encourages spiritual well-being.
BACKGROUND
Prayer is something that I’ve personally struggled with, and having spent the last 4 years at college surrounded by my friends in a Christian fellowship, I knew that I wasn’t alone.
Being more familiar with the Christian faith, I decided to target this demographic.
This project runs through a full UX process from end-to-end with two rounds of usability testing, to help me refine and advance its maturity.
What factors make it difficult to pray?
When do people feel the most encouraged in prayer?
RESEARCH
To address this problem, I first needed to understand the deeper motivations people have for praying and the reasons why they may not pray despite their convictions about it.
User Interviews
5 participants, remote
I conducted 5 user interviews with people of the Christian faith who are familiar with the concept of praying.
I found that the main reasons people pray is to increase intimacy and understanding of God, themselves, and their relationship to the world around them. But, the issues arise when:
“It’s discouraging when it feels like I’m waiting for an answer.”
“It’s hard for me to remember the things I’ve prayed about in the past.”
“Sometimes it feels like I’m rambling and don’t know what I’m trying to pray about.”
The overarching problem I identified was:
People struggle to persevere in prayer either because of distractions or impatience to hear an answer.
I did some affinity mapping to further understand their frustrations and needs.
People feel more purposeful in their prayer when it is organized
People feel the most encouraged when they remember past blessings, whether their own or others’
People are more inclined to pray when they are in a community that encourages them
After the interviews I already had some ideas, but I wanted to check out some competitors to see what’s already been done, paying close attention to app reviews to see what is working for users and what is still lacking.
Where we go with this information…
The biggest areas to target across all the apps are navigation and customizability. Users want the base navigation of the app to be easy to understand, while having room to adjust set up the features to meet their specific needs.
I need to figure out what type of user I’m targeting in order to prioritize which features I develop.
DEFINE
I made sense of the information by summarizing it into two personas: Michelle, who represents more long-term practicing Christians and Ethan, who represents people newer to the Christian faith.
Michelle loves to serve her community and takes her faith seriously, but can never seem to find the time to pray. She gets distracted easily and finds it difficult to remember all the things she wants to pray about.
She needs a way to stay organized and intentional, remembering to slow down and reflect on God’s presence in her life.
Ethan, is hardworking and independent, newer to the Christian faith but determined to learn more. He feels lost on what to pray about sometimes.
He is looking for guidance and encouragement to be free in his prayer.
Since it is easier to improve existing habits rather than create new ones, I decided to focus on Michelle as my primary persona. For this project, we are focusing on encouraging people in their prayer, not providing resources to help people learn the habit from the start.
IDEATE
Now that I had a clearer idea of which direction I’d be going, I created an extensive feature matrix and prioritized based on the goals and needs of my target user. From this, I knew the key features to focus on were:
With these features in mind, I drew up a sitemap to better visualize how the user would access them to achieve their goals.
In the development of this project, I ended up with two iterations of the sitemap. The one below is the final sitemap but I will go into more detail about how and why changes were made in the iterations after mid-fidelity usability testing.
With the sitemap drawn out, I moved on to sketch out five flows, but I reminded myself that my goal was to deliver a minimum viable product -- preparing a proof of concept that performs at least one feature exceptionally well.
I knew that I had to prioritize a few flows and validate them through testing.
Low to Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
I moved on to drawing out low-fidelity wireframes around the 3 main flows, playing with different formats and icon placements, and then refining them into mid-fidelity wireframes.
Journal a prayer
I found that most people handwrite their prayers or speak them aloud, so I wanted to preserve the freedom that comes with a blank page or an open space.
Organize a list
On the home page, you are able to access all journaled prayers as well as personalized lists of prayer topics and notes. Edit, archive, or add updates to your prayer items.
Create a testimony
One of the biggest frustrations people encountered was being discouraged in the waiting process. I wanted to play around with the idea of having a “testimony” feed where you can document memories and answered prayer requests to look back on but strayed away from making it a social feature as some users expressed concerns about intimacy and privacy.
ITERATE + VALIDATE
At this point, I knew I needed to do some testing to validate designs so far, focusing on the specific things I mentioned above but also the overall navigation of the app, to ensure that the base structure of the app meets my users’ needs before developing things further.
Mid-Fidelity Usability Testing
4 moderated usability tests, remote
Users found the individual tasks and features straightforward, but the problems arose in navigating between tasks and understanding where everything is organized within the app.
I wrote out a list of actionable steps, prioritizing into 3 levels.
STYLE + BRANDING
Before I could move onto designing the high-fidelity wireframes, it was time to develop the brand identity and bring the app to life.
ITERATE + VALIDATE pt 2
Using the branding and the feedback from my mid-fidelity usability testing, I created high-fidelity wireframes and adjusted the flows I wanted to test.
From Mid to High
Now it was time to do another round of testing with adjusted flows to ensure that the iterations met their goals and to catch any areas of improvement.
High-Fidelity Usability Testing
6 moderated usability tests, remote
TASKS
Iterating some more ...
Users were able to complete all tasks with little to no difficulties, saying that they appreciated how little they had to think about how to complete the tasks.
Some confusion that arose with icons and tagging a journal entry so I made adjustments to make the flows even more seamless.
Edit in-list create button
Users said it took more effort to locate the create button and figure out what “Update” means.
Changed the placement and size of the create button be consistent with all other create buttons in the app, closer to the thumb.
Removed the “Update” option as it can be accessed through the cards once created.
Navigation from prayers tab
Some users were confused about why there was no add button on this tab.
Added a create button that would lead them to an open journal page already tagged with the list to decrease manual actions the user has to take.
Button states + hierarchy
Users often clicked Done before interacting with the toggle.
Changed the order of what is presented and used color to make a clearer distinction of what the main path is.
Confirmation of actions
In addition to the confirmation that an update was added to a card, there is now also a confirmation of when the update is posted to your feed.
This ensures the user is aware of both changes and provides another way to direct the user to the testimony feed.
Edit list reference icon
Some were confused by the plus sign next to the list icon.
Changed it to be the exact same icon as the list icon in the main nav bar to make it easier to recognize.
Edit tags
Users didn’t notice the prompt to add a tag or were confused about what it meant.
Made the notice more visible and appear as soon as you open a journal page. Changed the wording to be more clear that the user must type.
Kept it like this instead of having a designated icon or dropdown to sort the prayer into a list in order to maintain the free-flowing customizability of tags.
Testimony features
Some users wanted more social capabilities while others liked it to remain private.
Users are able to see the stats on their own posts but not others’. Added a comment feature per multiple users’ suggestions, but with an option to send it privately.
Added a grid view for more accessibility.
FINAL DESIGN
And this leads us to our final solution ...
A mobile app that provides an organized and enjoyable way to pray through remembering blessings and encouraging community.
Lists
Create and customize lists, adding prayer requests and events to remind yourself of the things you are praying about.
Add updates
Keep track of your growth through prayer and remind yourself of God’s faithfulness by adding updates to your requests. Share your updates with your friends and/or archive answered prayer requests.
Prayer journal
Journal a prayer any way you want. Type it out, voice record, or upload images. Add a tag to sort your prayer and reference your lists to direct your thoughts and keep you focused.
View all prayers
Keep a record of all your prayers, sort or filter through them and bookmark the ones that are especially important to you.
Share testimonies
Share your praises with a trusted group of friends, testifying to God’s goodness in your life and remembering the power of prayer. Give encouragement by sending messages and giving a like or “praying for you.”
REFLECTION
Prioritization is key
It was easy to get carried away with brainstorming features and wanting to ideate solutions to every problem I heard, but I had to constantly remind myself of my target users’ needs and my specific business goals. My goal was to deliver a minimum viable product, so I had to prioritize what was most important, recognizing that I couldn’t develop everything to a high standard within the scope of this project.
Nothing is set in stone
Testing and iterating throughout the process is so important. Users can be reminded of things or gain a better understanding of their own needs through testing your prototype. It saves a lot of effort and time to validate your designs in phases rather than all at the end. In hindsight, I feel that it would have been really helpful to do a card sort or an informal testing of my low-fidelity sketches. Surveying to get a better idea of which features to prioritize would have also helped direct my efforts.
People learn through trial and error... but make the trials easy
I found that users didn’t mind exploring the app to familiarize themselves, but the threshold for which they tolerated this process was very low. There will almost always be some kind of learning curve, but users enjoy the experience so much more when the curve is low and they are able to get answers to their questions as quick as possible.
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