Faithful

Preaching in the 21st century

Everything is digitalizing, and even the church, one of the most ancient and conservative institutions, goes digital as well. Faithful is the first startup in the field of religion that we got to work on.

They came to us with a very clear vision: make an app that would let preachers get in touch with their parishioners, and everyone – follow their spiritual leaders online.

It is like Patreon, but for church. 

Faithful connects preachers and believers in those situations when they can’t go to the church (hello, our “beloved” pandemic).

Faithful have already been working on the product for a while: they had wireframes and visual style ready and knew their end-users well. Faithful was one step away from launching as an MVP. All they needed was a skilled designer, who could design a user interface based on the existing wireframes.

However, we at Eleken often try to do a bit more than the client asks.

Our designer made two versions of each screen: one accurately following the wireframes and another one with suggestions that could improve user experience.

Design requirements

Design brief said, “We expect best practices using modern design guidelines with an emphasis on site speed, cross-browser compatibility, well-known design cues, and straightforward implementation for the engineers”. So, we started with these requirements.

Minimizing the entrance barrier

Believe it or not, it's not easy to be a priest. The interface of Faithful makes the technical side of online preaching as frictionless as possible so that creators can focus on their communication with the congregation. 

New creators can register on the platform in a matter of a minute. They have to enter basic information and they are ready to upload their first posts. 

Saving souls with just a few clicks

Compared to the upload process on YouTube, on the Faithful app screen, the flow is very minimalist. Users can add a photo or video, choose a thumbnail, and decide whether the post will be open for everyone or only for subscribers. That's it, the sermon is ready for publishing.

Once published, the notification appears. However, it is not just a time-waster like “Your post is published” – OK. There is a space for some useful tips that can help creators promote their content. The text is not there yet – it was just an MVP.

Take a look at these two versions of the screen: we decided that a less transparent background brings more attention to the notification, so the second option was chosen.

Feed. A look from the follower’s side

When a curious user clicks on the creator’s name, their profile page opens. The biggest and brightest button calls them to subscribe: getting subscriptions is the main goal of the app.

Secondary buttons, Follow and Share, are not accented. There is also an option to follow a creator and see their public posts.

Mobile vs desktop

As a common practice, the mobile version comes first, as fitting all the elements on a smaller screen is harder. The feed is inspired by the best examples of social media: minimum number of icons and buttons, and few comments below each post.

The desktop version is based on the mobile one. Making both layouts similar saves time and effort when making an MVP.

Work process

We had a strict time frame, and had to do all main screen designs in two months. The work was finished in 1,5 months. From the Eleken team, we had one designer dedicated to working on the project. She made one screen after another, and they were approved during regular meetings with the client.

After that, the specs and art were delivered from Figma to Zeplin and got into the hands of the developers.

… And here’s what we got

The result is what you see: an app has awesome reviews, getting 4.8 stars on Google Play store. By reading the reviews, you see that Faithful became that sort of a messiah among religious apps that people were waiting for for a long time already.

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We have a great individual

designer

from Eleken who is smart, communicates well in English and is

pleasant to deal with

and all around nice.Very responsive and timely.

Adam Rugel, VP of Product /

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Let's design something special

If it feels like our UI/UX design company is a good match, but you still have questions about our work process, we can give you a free 3-day trial working with one of our designers.

Let’s talk