Church Center App Research Project

Background

The church (which I will refer to as CEBC here) uses a church management software called Planning Center to manage, post information, and make changes to their Church Center app and website simultaneously. Although CEBC regularly promoted the app as a way to look up event information, church leaders weren’t sure how to improve this process, in addition to how to get more people to use the app.

Research Goal

Learn how church members gather information and use resources on the app to suggest improvements for information communication and accessibility.

Planning and Preparation

CEBC's church leaders needed easily understandable goals to focus on, so I chose to interview people to gather different types of data for the app, then analyze this information through affinity mapping and I statements.

Exploring and Finding What to Ask

Before trying to find people to interview, I wanted to learn how CEBC church members:

Prefer to receive information about church events
Use the app and its functions, along with any problems they’ve experienced.
Currently view the app, including likes/dislikes

Click to view my entire interview script and methodology in a new tab.

With these objectives in mind, I chose to center my questions around the layout, level of detail, and location of information on a page.

The "Calendar" section of the app displays more like a list of dates, so I asked whether this format was helpful for scheduling and planning.

While I was focused on information accessibility, I wanted to ask about other app functions to provide a holistic analysis.

Thus, I quickly familiarized myself with several areas of the app, and noted the home page tiles, navigation bar, and any other page a church member could visit.

Since many members are in groups, I asked if the notifications were useful and accessible.

How I Recruited My Interviewees

Prior to the interviews, I sent out a survey to gather statistical information and find potential interviewees.

To make sure I based my findings on the right population and could easily contact my interviewees, so I chose to speak with people who:

have used the app and
regularly attend CEBC’s Sunday service

Click to see a pre-filled example of my survey.

Analysis and Synthesis

After interviewing 13 individuals over the course of 30 days, I began my analysis. I tallied up responses and made two key observations regarding how CEBC church members used the app:

Churchgoers like to get information about 10am service through a mix of methods (online and in-person).
Most people open the app every 1-2 weeks just to check the Events and/or Messages sections of the app

Click to see all the groupings and "I" statements in a new tab.

These observations revealed that CEBC members don't use the app for long periods of time, and will leave immediately if they don't achieve their goal: getting information about an event or message.

Hence, I narrowed down my affinity map groupings to 3 topics that repeatedly came up in my interviews, and were highly focused on the content of the app:

Inconsistent layout/display of information

Though many event and course pages require the same information, dates and times were written out differently, and the first sentence of some descriptions lacked overview about the event or course.

Sometimes, there were different pages of the same event or course in two separate areas. Like the examples below, some information was inconsistent and lacked detail, so interviewees were confused as to what the true details were.

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Click the video to view a screen record of the Connect Track version.

Click the video to view a screen record of the Events version.

Notice how the overview of the course is in the third sentence instead of at the beginning of the description!

Vague descriptions

In addition to inconsistencies in event pages, descriptions for resource areas of the app only told users what to do, but never explained the importance of this section of the app, such as who the resources are for, and how items are related to one another.

Could use more inviting tone and language

As a church trying to grow, the last thing they want is to push people away. With descriptions that use lots of church jargon, the tone can come off intimidating, uninviting, or judgmental to people who don't attend or know much about church.

A jargon-heavy description about a list of resources

An unintuitive title paired with a vague, jargon-heavy description may prompt users to leave the app.

Next Steps

Given that the church is still relatively new to the app, I figured the church could address these issues with guidelines and clarifying the meaning behind different items.

My inexpensive, easily applicable solutions to the leadership team were:

Example template with instructions on details and order of information

This is an example of a template I created that is organized in a way that interviewees said would be helpful.

Create a Standard/Criteria for Descriptions

The interviewees' biggest concern was having to search for important details. Since the church mainly uses the app to share event information, having a standard for what information is communicated, and the format used would be helpful.

Clearer Vision for "Connect Track"

While numerous resources are available for church members and non-believers on the app, people need to know where to look. Almost every interviewee had a different interpretation of the name "Connect Track," so I asked the leadership team to determine the importance behind the resources, then find a more suitable name.

Questions that asked leadership the importance of some resources, and based on their reasoning, find an intuitive name

Here are some questions I suggested in my slide presentation to the church leaders.

Technical Changes and Other Suggestions

Document of technical suggestions and other ways to improve app usage

Click above to view the document of my suggestions in a new tab.

While I did not learn much of the backend process, I suggested and categorized an array of solutions based on how useful the changes would be for the average user. A couple of these include:

Changing title from “Sign-Ups” to “Events”
Utilizing Calendar in conjunction with Events

Some non- app-related suggestions that I thought would benefit CEBC members included:

Informational Sessions/Guides
Interview/ask churchgoers who don’t use app for their input

Church Center App: Promoting Effective, Orderly Communication