Preminence Church Software
- Product Research
- UIUX Design
- Software Development
- Non-Profit Development
We have a team of believers. One of us had observed that religious institutions lacked a tool for not only enhancing administrative functions in the church but also fostering stronger relationships between church leaders and church members. We figured such a tool would be pivotal in bringing personalization and analytics to the church.
Project Analysis
The faith industry is one of the biggest not only in Kenya but also in the world. Notable is that the industry faces a string of challenge such as doubts among believers about the role of the church in their lives. Also, the relationship between the church and their members is also somehow loose in that most people only get to interact with their pastors on Sunday. Any other communication is done through booking appointments etc.
Churches have also been facing a declining trend of contribution from believers. There has never been a better time to avert this challenge for the industry. We figured there could be a way of knitting together the solutions to these challenges. Out of this consideration, Preminence was born.
Tasks
The concept behind the Preminence Project was not entirely new from what the current software market provides. This necessitated a comprehensive research, iteration, and visualization of how the software would be actualized to fit the wide audience that makes up the church. We performed core activities that underscore software success including business analysis, competitive analysis, user research, and UI/UX research.
User roles
Our research yielded that Preminence would serve almost as an ERP for the church, incorporating a number of user roles as follows.
Associate Pastors
Associate pastors would access the features of normal members but also create new sermons among other pastoral duties.
Senior Pastor (Admin)
This would control all the users of the software including monitoring performance and managing log activities. This means the super administrator would have such all create, read, edit, and delete abilities for activities such as payments, events, pledges, prayer requests (from all members), tithes, bank accounts, among others. He would also delegate roles to other users at will.
Church members
Church members would be able to create and read personal data including history of contribution, prayer requests, pledges, and church events.
IT Administrator
This person would access the features of normal members but also be able to update the church website with essential information such as church gallery and social media.
Results
Performed the business analysis
We performed the business analysis to examine the feasibility of the project. In the analysis, we explored different monetization avenues to validate the project. We also did a cost analysis to estimate the amount of time and resources it would take to have the project fully functional.
Performed the product and user research
The project was poised to involve different users who have different inclinations towards technology. We conducted a user research to examine the issues that matter the most to the different user groups in the church. The software needed to be not only intuitive but also fully-fledged in its intended activities.
Designed the UX
We used the outcomes of the product and user research to define how the users would interact with the product and how it would affect their experience. We laid out the information architecture informed by the research to envision how core screens and activities would flow.
Designed the UI
The UI design stage was about envisioning how the different screens of the software would appear. First, we selected the most important screens including the financials screen, members, appointment, login, spiritual articles, among others. We defined the essential dimensions that would guide developers in actualizing the software.
Defined the server architecture
Our goal was to make sure the product as easy to use despite its complexity. Server efficiency is part of the factors that affect user experience. A key consideration in that regard is that good internet is not evenly distributed to all churches in Kenya. There was therefore a need to deploy the software in adequate server infrastructure to ensure that it was deployed efficiently and conveniently. Another consideration is the sensitivity of church data. We figured that cloud hosting was the most ideal for encryption of church data and solid backups.
Coded the software
We coded the Preminence software from the fronted to the backend. We delivered the MVP to the market and have been shipping subsequent versions.
Core features
This is for church members and visitors to book appointments with the pastor.
This is a tool for keeping individual tithes through which personal and grouped records would be managed.
The church would be able to share its sermons with members of the public in multimedia formats including text, audio, and video formats.
This is a feature that enables churches to send messages and emails to members all from one software.
This feature would help the leaders and members in creating spiritual articles at will.
Technology Stack
Branding
Color
Typography
Google Fonts
Montserrat
