Ascension
Ascension is a company from Pennsylvania, US that produces products for Catholics. They publish the Bible and other religious books, create Bible studies and release free videos as well as podcasts. My task was to design an app for them.
PRODUCT
INDUSTRY
Mobile app
E-books, Podcasts
MY ROLE
Product designer
DATE
2022
- Create a worldwide platform for Catholics where they can pray, meditate and get religious content they won’t be able to get anywhere else.
Goal
- Adapt existing books to mobile screens to make them more accessible for common readers to attract more customers to the platform.
Main problems
- Complicated structure of the books (cross-links, color coding, main chapters + prayers, etc)
- All books are interconnected, and the podcasts are connected to books.
- Create a tool to study Bible and other religious books as well as a product for meditation and prayer.
A glimpse of information architecture of Ascension App.
The Bible is no joke — complicated structure, hundreds of characters, footnotes, etc. The Ascension team created a Bible that is easy to read. They reordered its structure to make it more logical and added color-coding and interactive footnotes. Here's how we adapted the table of contents to fit the mobile screen.
1.0 The Bible in a Year
The Ascension team also added key events scattered throughout the book that explain crucial twists of the plot in plain English. That is how we adapted them to the mobile screen.
1.1 Key Events
The Ascension app has 2 types of footnotes — regular (at the end of each chapter) and interactive ones. Sometimes they contain cross-links to other chapters and books. Footnotes are color-coded.
1.2 Footnotes
In the text menu, the user can copy text, leave highlights and notes.
1.3 Text menu
Another great feature of the Bible in a Year is the original Ascension content ingrained in the text. This content can be either text, audio, or video. It is related to the text of the Bible and provides more explanation or just facts or commentary.
1.4 Additional content
To see the Ascension content, the user has to buy a subscription.
The Ascension content updates regularly and appears on the home screen.
The user can hide or show additional content, bookmark chapters, see highlights and notes, search this book, and manage settings.
1.5 Book menu
The user can also listen to transcripts by pressing on the headphone icon.
1.6 Transcripts
The Catechism has a more complicated structure than the Bible. And is Ascension the first ever app to post a digital version of the Catechism.
0.2 The Catechism
The Catechism contains a lot of cross-links that lead either to other Catechism chapters or to the Bible. The user can jump from one cross-link to another and then use the back arrow to go back, or they can press the cross button to close the book and then return to the place they've left off before they opened any cross-links.
0.2.1 Cross-links
0.2.2 Hidden content
The Catechism has a complicated structure with plenty of inserts in the text. This is an example of how we transformed some of them in the Appendix section.
The app also contains The Bible in a Year and The Catehism in a Year Podcasts. The user can read transcripts or quickly go through episodes by pressing on the contents button in the lower menu. Leaving highlights and notes is also available in player.
0.3 Podcasts
Each podcast has a reading plan with a list of Catechism or Bible chapters the podcast episode is referring to. The user can mark the chapters they've read and see their progress.
0.3.1 Reading plan
The user can search words and chapters across the Bible, Catechism or Podcasts.
0.4 Search
- The Ascension App was released on June 26th 2023. It was downloaded more than 90 times in the first month.
Result
- Now it has 35 000+ five-star reviews on App Store and 2M+ users worldwide.
- Launched to the #1 spot in the "Reference" category in the US App Store, and #36 overall.
- The app is now the #1 Catholic Bible App
