App Design and Prototyping for the Church of Sweden – bringing communities together across the globe.
Svenska kyrkan (The Church of Sweden) is an international community of over 5.7 million people.
Part of their organisation involves running fundraisers and events to create positive changes for people around the world.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, they initiated a digital transformation which included delivering podcasts, live streams and live events to users via a new app.
Up until 2020, Svenska kyrkan had relied on their website to orgnanise face to face meet-ups and local congregations. Extending their services to an app would add a new dimension of accessibility for new and existing members.
To create consistency across the brand and instant recognition to users, they wanted their app to extend the look and feel of their current website.
The newest addition to their media output consisted of both live and recorded church services from different congregations.
I researched into different video platforms, taking into account our limited scope of features and created an elegant, simple way for members to join a live service.
Once a live stream has ended, a recorded version is available to view on demand via the app.
Users can find and listen hundreds of podcasts from worldwide Church of Sweden congregations, to listen to at work, home or on the move.
The addition of this to the bottom tab bar has proven a huge success in engaging members – resulting in frequent, repeated visits to the app to listen to the latest podcasts.
Understanding that the app would scale rapidly as new media is created, the need for a user to find content quickly was a priority – so I created an easy way to filter and sort through live video, podcasts and events.
Users can sort by most popular, date ascending and descending. They can also filter by their congregation.
Within the video tab, users can switch between browsing both live streams and past recordings.
Creating a way for users to connect with their local community is at the heart of the app. Users can find the congregation and church that is closest to them, wherever they are in the world.
Using the events tab, a user can effortlessly find local events for their congregation. Events were traditionally held in person, but due to COVID-19 we made digital events via Zoom a priority.
