One Voice Journal

A journaling app designed to connect users to their faith and selves.

One Voice Journal is a mobile journaling app designed to help Christians connect more deeply with their faith and themselves through reflective writing. The Firm Development Foundation, a non-profit Church Ministry, partnered with Develop for Good to create this digital platform that would enable believers worldwide to engage in meaningful self-reflection and spiritual growth. What started as an engineering-only initiative evolved into a comprehensive design and development effort when the team recognized the need for thoughtful user experience design to truly serve their community.

Working within a compressed timeline after joining the project in week 5, I collaborated with one other designer, six developers, and a product manager to design the core journal entry experience. Over 10 weeks, we transformed an ambitious vision into foundational designs for a user-centered mobile app that balances spiritual reflection with modern functionality. Through competitive analysis, user journey mapping, persona development, and story mapping, we identified key opportunities to differentiate One Voice Journal from existing apps—incorporating faith-centered prompts, intuitive tagging systems, and enhanced search capabilities tailored specifically for Christian users.

Our design approach centered on creating an accessible, spiritually-minded experience that wouldn't intimidate users facing the blank page. We developed a cohesive visual identity that met accessibility standards while evoking spirituality through thoughtful color choices and typography. The result is an app that seamlessly blends essential journaling features—text formatting, audio recording with transcription, and inspirational prompts—with a visual language that feels both modern and reflective. Two rounds of user testing with 15 participants validated our approach, with 100% reporting positive experiences and particularly strong feedback on the audio recording functionality that allows users to capture thoughts in the moment and refine them later through editable transcriptions.
OBJECTIVE
Create a mobile journaling app for self-reflection and spiritual growth, enabling users to connect with others globally.

App Features

Add and Format Text 📄
Users can enter a title and body text and format the text to change its size, add bold/underline/italics/strikethrough, create a bulleted or numbered list, or add highlight.
Record and Edit Audio 🎙️
For some, it is faster and more natural to speak reflections aloud. Users can record an audio note (and trim any unwanted sections). To allow for easy skimming in the future, an auto-generated transcription is created once the audio note is saved. This transcription can be edited to correct any errors.
Prompts 💬
A blank page can be intimidating. Spiritually-focused prompts inspire users to get started.
"Collaborating with Develop for Good was an absolute joy. The students brought fresh ideas and a real passion for excellence that showed in every part of their work. They listened to what we needed and created a design that's both modern and incredibly user-friendly. The engineers were just as impressive, going the extra mile to include offline functionality, which has made our app even more versatile. We couldn't be more pleased with the results and are truly thankful for their dedication to our project."
— Curtis Smith, Partner, Firm Collective

Process

While the project was originally planned as an engineering-only effort, during the initial scoping phase, the team discovered a combined design and engineering effort was required. Therefore, they brought in two designers (including myself) in week 5 of the project, and as a team, we collaborated to develop a schedule for project to allow design and engineering work to happen simultaneously.

Design Research

Competitive Analysis
First, we conducted a competitive analysis of a variety of journaling and dream journaling apps, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses in areas such as user interface, features, and user experience. Our research highlighted several opportunities for One Voice Journal, such as incorporating prompts, tags, filtering, and text formatting.
Personas/User Journey Mapping
Our client originally had two user groups in mind for the app—the primary user group was Christian adults and the secondary user group was non-religious dream journalers. From creating the journey maps for each of these groups, we found that the needs of each were different enough that, together with the client, we decided to focus solely on Christian users for the MVP.
Story Mapping
To define what features would be part of our first design sprint and to prepare for lo-fi wireframing, I created the story map below.

Branding

After we found that the client’s current color palette did not meet accessibility standards, I developed a new palette with tints and shades of their previous colors and provided guidance for whether white or black text would meet accessibility standards against these new colors. I also added purple to the palette to evoke a sense of spirituality and reflection. I presented these colors along with recommendations for typography and a selection of wireframe mockups illustrating different ways these could be applied in the app and received the client’s enthusiastic approval.

Wireframing

To meet the schedule set with engineers, we progressed rapidly from lo-fi to hi-fi wireframes, incorporating the branding we developed for the client. I was responsible for the journal entry screens shown below.

User Testing

We conducted two rounds of user testing through User Testing with a total of 15 participants (5 in the first round and 10 in the second). The feedback from participants was very positive, with several specifically expressing their enthusiasm for the audio recording and enhanced search features. Each round of testing also revealed several small but impactful adjustments we could make to improve the user experience.
100%
of participants described having a positive experience with the app
9/10
participants in round 1 stated the audio recording feature met or exceeded their expectations
4/5
participants in round 2 found tags easy and intuitive
Participant Quotes
“Amazing. Loved the features with audio notes, editing and journaling. Looks like fun and the media types make it better and more attractive. Love the audio notes.”
“My overall experience was positive as everything works well and it is a very clear and easy app to use.”
“Overall very good features all are easy to use and well implemented.”

AI Integration Concepts

Throughout the design process, we identified numerous opportunities for future enhancement beyond the initial MVP scope. Recognizing AI as a very promising area for expansion, I created high-fidelity wireframes to help our client visualize and communicate these possibilities to stakeholders. These concepts explored how AI could deepen reflection and personalize the user experience through intelligent journal entry analysis, weekly insights into emerging patterns in entries, and dynamically generated prompts tailored to each user's spiritual journey.

Team Collaboration

Our remote team of 9 was distributed around the world with up to 12 hours of time difference between us. This meant we had to be intentional about our collaboration, both internally and with our client. We used Slack, Figma, and Miro boards for asynchronous collaboration and held weekly meetings with the client, with our internal design and engineering team, and with the design team.

In our meetings with the client, we presented our work and discussed any items needing their input. In our internal meetings, we did an individual stand-up and presented relevant progress in the design work—such as giving demos of features that had been designed to ensure the engineers understood the intent behind our designs when we handed them off to be developed. Our design team meetings functioned as working sessions where we could discuss any blockers or provide review of each others’ designs.

Project Collaborators

Product Manager
Rozalin Draghosian
Designers
Haley Majoros
Sonia Leung
Engineering Manager
David Cao
Developers
Julian Beaudry
Lyton Mhlanga
Min Nguyen
Nankun Xu
Qilong Wang
Satvik Narang