Overview
Team:
UX Researchers: Ryan Anderson, Blake Warner
Project Manager: Jenni Cyrek
PRAYR CEO: Julee Dilley
My Role: UX Researcher, Design Mockups
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Industry: Ministry, Technology
Research Length: November 24, 2023 - November 29, 2023
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Locations: Kirkland WA, Aberdeen WA
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Tools Used: Figma, Excel, Slack
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Background
Why?
Prayer: PRAYR has been developed with one central task in mind: prayer. The ultimate vision of PRAYR is to help Christians grow and mature in their prayer lives so they can grow and mature in the faith. The app's encouragement
features are extremely important for building community and trust.
Who?
Ministries: Focused on ministries and churches of all demographics –
customized to the ministry.
How?
In App: PRAYR allows users to pray for and make prayer requests in their church groups as well as allowing them to send encouragement and bible verses.
Hypothesis: Many users are struggling to find and utilize the encouragement features in the app.
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Design Challenge
How might we make it easier for PRAYR users to encourage others using the app?
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Business Questions
How can we make encouragement features that users find most important to be more discoverable?
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How has the current design impacted user engagement with the encouragement features?
Research Questions
How do users navigate the app currently?
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Why are users struggling to find the encouragement features?
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How do users feel about the overall design?
Methodology
This was a moderated usability study with quantitative measures for think-aloud user testing and post-session surveys, fielded with representative prospective users.
Sample Size: We had 10 total participants: five 20-39 year-olds and five 40-60 year-olds to get a good idea of how both age groups are navigating the app.
Each participant was given 4 tasks asking them to interact with the 3 encouragement features and a redesigned mockup of the app.
Methods Used: Likert Scale to understand how the current design is used and A/B Testing to see what to keep and change from the initial redesign to the final redesign.
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Current design
Initial Redesign
Research Protocol and My Notes
Results
After testing and interviewing 5 participants each, of varying age demographics, we compiled our notes and data. I created an excel sheet and inputted the data to get a better understanding of that data.
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This is what we found:
Task Completion
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Out of the 40 total tasks that users participated in, 16 were failed.​
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That’s 40% of the total tasks
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An average of 1.6 failed tasks out of 4 tasks per user​.
Insight: Though not as severe as we thought, this data still confirms the hypothesis that many users are not able to find/use the encouragement features using the current UI.​
Task Ease​​
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Using a Likert Scale: 1-5 (Very Easy to Very Difficult) users reported that 16 tasks were higher than a 4 to complete.
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The average score for a task was just over 3.5
Insight: This data confirms the hypothesis that many users are not able to find/easily use the encouragement features using the current UI.
User NavigationOof the
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Most users first try to tap the "new prayer" as well as the "check mark" to do any action because it is the most clearly defined button on the page .
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The second most common locations users first tapped were the prayer text, profile picture, and name.
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Insight: Clear buttons are being tapped,
most users are looking to interact with the prayer card itself.
Redesign Recommendations
Our design challenge is :
How might we make it easier for
PRAYR users to encourage others using the app?
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However, we received a lot of incredible feedback beyond this challenge. So, we used the data, feedback, and surveys to insightfully and professionally recommend changes to the app that answers the question of this design challenge and improves the overall design of the app
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Insights
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Most users are interacting with the prayer card and they want buttons that are obvious.
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"I want clearer buttons"
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Gradients/3D is dated.
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Orange is a little harsh
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"Make it more Gen Z asthetic
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“I want a quick way to see only 1 group”
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Be able to filter what prayers you see
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"Check" and "Quick message" have the same purpose: to let you and the one who requested prayer that you are praying for them
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Needs quicker/easier access to the "New Prayer"
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"Feels impersonal, insincere"
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Needs to be as close to praying in person as possible. Less robotic.
Recommended Change
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Show the buttons clearly on the prayer card.
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Keep labels.
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Flat design with a soft blue as the header color.
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Modern icons
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Add voice memos/ recordings feature for praying. Especially when scheduling and time differences cause conflict for users.
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Added a filter for filtering groups, so your feed isn't overwhelming.
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Combined the two buttons into 1 "Pray/prayed" button
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Add a second "new prayer" button on the bottom right
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Should have a way to easily view important prayers
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Add a pin feature so the prayer can't get lost
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Add more excitement to answered prayers
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People want to rejoice together!
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Have a specific color for prayer cards that have been answered.
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Draw specific attention to answered prayers with confetti when you open the app.
Next Steps
After completing the initial design challenge, I would release an updated version of the app with as many of these recommendations as possible and complete another research study on the encouragement features and how people feel about the app and its design as a whole.
Reflection
Learnings: I learned that the design the designer thinks is best isn’t always what’s best for the user. I also learned how to use quantitative and qualitative data to improve design.
Changes: If I were to do this again using the new design, I would screen record each session to see exactly what users are doing and what they’re saying in real time to show stakeholders
Future Use:In the future I want to use what I learned about recording data using A/B testing and Likert Scale to produce data-driven designs and redesigns for users.