Enhancing Student Ministry
Designed a companion app for Greek student leaders that resulted in leaders feeling more organized and having more accurate data about Greek InterVarsity impact.
Mission
Greek InterVarsity exists to answer the question, “Can I be Greek and Christian?” with Yes.
For the last 20 years, the strategy to this answer was to train up Greek student leaders to lead Bible Studies in their Greek houses through the “Bible Study in a Box”
10 years ago, Greek InterVarsity wondered if a companion app could serve students, but the timing wasn’t right, and the project was stopped and started several times.
Discover
Prior User Research
Previous efforts had included user research with developed personas that I could draw from.
However, none of the research had explored the angle of what the life of a student leader was like in a semester. I knew this app was intended to be used over the course of a semester, so I took this opportunity to host an exploratory workshop where we took the persona information and aligned to a semester.
* while there is a Greek Staff journey and companion dashboard that goes along with all of this, the rest of this case study will focus on the student experience.
Problems
STUDENTSDespite attending trainings, leaders still felt unsure of their ability to lead.
Students were often unprepared due to the difficulty of getting to preparation materials.
Leaders are often leaders in many organizations. With so much to keep track of, the needs of their members could fall through the cracks.
STAFFStaff aren’t allowed in Greek houses, so the student leader is their only source of input – as long as a student remembers to share.
Greek staff are often spread across many campuses; keeping track of how each chapter ministry is doing is mentally overwhelming. Each staff had their own version of a spreadsheet.
So we discovered the life of a student leader over the course of a year.
Discovery Outcomes
What is success?
Students chuckle when they use it
The app enhances ministry, not keeps them from doing ministry.
Students feel more confident, motivated, and supported
What will the story be?
As part of the workshop, I invited attendees to write the story of the Lead app, and here were some of the key parts of their stories that I synthesized into an overall user journey:
“When I login, I see my friends who I need to take a next step with, and it suggests what that step should be - that I should check-in, or offer to pray with them”
“When I go to prepare my Bible study, it shows me the preparation video and which pages to go to in my guide book.”
“I see that another leader on my campus in a different sorority is having a Bible study - I send her a note to encourage her and that I’m praying for her.”
Design
Outline
Many designers start with wireframes - but for years I’ve used a slightly adjusted process where I start with an outline of the major sections on each screen, essentially information architecture for mobile apps.
This helps make sure what my product owner is expecting and what I’m anticipating to design will be aligned.
Visualizing for emphasis
Based on the major features, attributes of the persona, and insights of the workshop, I used wireframes to emphasize:
Other Bible studies happening so a student could pray for them.
What the latest update from other student leaders was.
The next upcoming Bible study.
Database
Because I have a background in computer science and systems analysis, I put together an initial draft of the data model.
This would help me make sure that as I designed screens going forward, I was careful to only include content that we had agreed upon would be present in the database.
If at this point you are thinking to yourself, “What a nerd.” You are pegging me correctly.
Test
Really understanding ministry.
Even though I had Greek leadership explaining Greek ministry to me during our exploratory workshop, I learned so much by being immersed in the training. They had forgotten to explain a core framework to me that everything about a Greek Chapter Ministry revolves around:
Inviting
Prepping
Hosting
Follow Up
My initial wireframes accounted for none of that! I started sketching on the back of my paper what a revised home screen would be like with all this new information.
Hearing from students
Initially I was limited to a focus group. I don’t recommend focus groups because I’d rather talk to people 1:1, but that was all the conference planners would allow. It didn’t matter though because no one showed up 😅.
Time to improvise! I quickly put together a card sort test that we could text to students instead and nabbed a table where I could have students take a look while they waited in line for food. They were shown different versions of the app– one that emphasized relationships, and one that emphasized the new cycle I had learned about.
Greek Leadership had never actually observed a student leader using the physical leader guide!
“The book doesn’t quite follow how I actually work.”
“I am a student leader, work a job, and have to do school work — the more it can help me be organized, the better.”
With massive preference, students wanted the app to help them stay organized. After working through the card sort results and qualitative feedback, we cut several features and reworked the outline.
Iterate
Working through sticky decisions.
Students had expressed a desire for the app to also include the study guide from the physical book. However, Greek Leadership asked for the study guide to be pulled from the app.
We had a choice before us:
We could offer the guide in the app, as asked for by students, so that they would always have their study guide on them. This would increase our development time and content management time to add a significant amount of content.
We could not offer the guide in the app, as asked for by staff to reap the benefits of studying by book instead of studying by phone. This would be much shorter development time.
We obviously want to listen to our students, but we also want to instill responsibility into our students. Sometimes that means not giving them what they asked for. How do we choose?
Proposal 1 leaned on the value of student feedback and ease of accessibility at expense of a longer build time.
Proposal 2 leaned on the value of responsibility and good habits and a shorter build time at the expense of student feedback.
While it was a sticky decision, we decided we would wait to see what more widespread feedback was and could build the study guide in later.
Make it Happen
Make it almost real
With the revised outline and Greek’s Visual Brand, we were ready to design the rest of the app and build functional specifications.
Pilot Test
We wanted to learn whether the app made a difference in student leaders’ ministries and what would be required for the app to be accelerated to a wider range of Greek Chapter Ministries.
To run the test, we set up 8 students over 8 weeks:
A baseline survey for the beginning of the study.
Bug reporting mechanism
Midpoint survey and interviews
Completion survery and interviews
“It REALLY complements the physical Bible study guide.”
“I would never use the prep videos before, but it’s nice to have them built into the app.”
“The app kept me excited to have the study and prodded me when I lost motivation.”
students said they tracked more often
PREPARED MORE OFTEN THAN IN PRIOR SEMESTERS
WOULD RECOMMEND THE APP TO OTHER LEADERSFinal Reflections
I loved the idea of building a digital companion to something physical. I think it’s important that we as designers are thoughtful about the benefits and drawbacks of digital transformation.
As the app continues to gain traction, we’re introducing more complex use cases like one chapter ministry having 2 student co-leaders. It’s fun to see a product evolve.
