Church Data Platform

1. Project Overview

Client: Anglican Church of Canada
Role/Contributions: Product Designer and Developer
Duration: 2017-2018 (Alpha, Beta, and Gamma phases)

Project Summary

To support the Anglican Church of Canada’s goal of better understanding and supporting church life across the country, I designed and developed ParishOS, a comprehensive data management system. This multi-phase project enabled dioceses, parishes, and individual churches to communicate information more consistently and efficiently. ParishOS includes a suite of modules for tracking weekly church activities, managing clergy and volunteers, and reporting key data to diocesan offices.

2. The Problem

The Anglican Church of Canada’s National Office needed a unified way to collect and track the day-to-day activities of dioceses, parishes, and churches. Prior to ParishOS, data was siloed across different diocesan offices, with inconsistent reporting methods and no central repository for tracking historical church life.

Parishes, dioceses, and ministry groups operated independently, often with paper-based or custom systems. This approach made it difficult for the National Office to gain an accurate picture of church life nationwide or provide timely guidance to dioceses.

Goals

• Create a centralized system to capture weekly service data, ministry schedules, and clergy history.
• Enable diocesan staff to request and collect parochial returns using a customizable form-builder.
• Ensure full user permission controls for church, parish, and diocesan users.
• Provide real-time insight into data changes, including a feed of record activity and historical tracking.

3. Research & Discovery

Research Methods

• Conducted user interviews with diocesan staff, parish administrators, and church leaders.
• Analyzed existing workflows, forms, and spreadsheets used to track key information.
• Collaborated with stakeholders from the Anglican Church’s National Office to understand reporting needs and desired outcomes.

Insights

• Most parishes lacked a consistent approach to tracking weekly services, causing inconsistencies in reporting.
• Dioceses needed a simpler method for collecting parochial returns, which were previously managed through email and spreadsheets.
• Users wanted granular control over user permissions to ensure appropriate access for staff, clergy, and volunteers.

Pain Points

• Fragmented data sources across parishes, dioceses, and the National Office.
• High administrative burden on diocesan staff to track and collect information from parishes.
• Lack of visibility into changes made to records, with no audit trail available.

4. Strategy

Concept Development

The concept of ParishOS was to unify parish and diocesan operations into a single platform with multiple integrated modules. The idea was to have core functionality that could be expanded in stages, ensuring the Anglican Church’s immediate needs were met while leaving room for future development.

Collaboration & Decision-Making

I met with stakeholders from the National Office and diocesan staff. These sessions identified which modules were most critical for launch and guided the prioritization of features for each development phase (Alpha, Beta, Gamma).

Tools & Methods

• Wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes created in Adobe XD.
• User flow mapping to design logical pathways for clergy, volunteers, and diocesan staff.
• Agile development process, with phased rollouts to allow for testing and user feedback.

5. Design/Development Process

Wireframes

Initial wireframes focused on user roles and key workflows for the Vestry Book and Parochial Returns, since those would be the most actively used modules.

After first rounds of stakeholder feedback, I prepared a basic version of the system so that they could test the workflows, albeit in a simplified state.

Design Priorities

• Consistency: Built consistent visual styles for each module to reduce cognitive load for users.
• Modular Approach: Modules could be deployed independently, ensuring an iterative rollout.
• Intuitive Navigation: Organized navigation around user roles, so clergy, diocesan staff, and parish administrators could each access tools relevant to them.

Challenges & Iterations

During testing, it was clear that the initial permission granting method was not tight enough. In response, I created role-based access to accommodate different roles (e.g., editor, reviewer) in addition to account-level access (i.e., church, region, diocese).

6. Implementation & Execution

How It Was Built

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Launch & Delivery

The development was rolled out in three phases:

• Alpha (2017): Launched core modules for a small subset of dioceses.
• Beta (Late 2017): Expanded user base and introduced role-based permissions and the "Activity Feed" for record changes.
• Gamma (2018): Full launch across most dioceses, adding advanced form-building, milestone tracking, and clergy history.

7. Results & Impact

Outcome

ParishOS is now used by many dioceses across the Anglican Church of Canada, supporting over a thousand churches nationwide.

Key Metrics

• Adoption Rate: Grew from a small group of early adopters to most dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada.
• Efficiency Gains: Church and diocesan staff significantly reduced their workload in collecting and processing parochial returns.
• Accountability: Diocesan and National staff have real-time visibility into record changes, promoting transparency and accountability.

Before/After Comparisons

• Before: Spreadsheets, email threads, and manual form processing.
• After: Centralized form-building, service tracking, and user roles, and real-time tracking.

8. Reflections

• The phased rollout was a helpful approach because it allowed for incremental improvements and continuous feedback as we worked deeper into the project.
• Developing ParishOS in modules allowed us to fine-tune the interface and workflows with great focus. e
• Setting a strong design direction at the beginning allowed modules to be added to the system in quicker succession.
• Collaborating with a wide spectrum of users (clergy, administrators, diocesan and national office staff) allowed us to plan for diverse needs.

ParishOS was a fun opportunity to serve a dynamic, diverse group of user across a large, multifaceted organization. It’s a project I’m proud of, knowing it’s actively helping dioceses, parishes, and churches better track and support their communities.

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