The Covering is a faith-led creative community connecting people through faith, creativity, events and shared purpose.

I led the product and UX design of its digital experience, beginning with a responsive website that brings community, events, content and creative talent into one central digital home.

The website represents the first phase of a wider product vision: to develop The Covering into a digital platform and mobile app that helps creatives discover their purpose, develop their talents, connect with community and create sustainable opportunities from their gifts.

Role: Product Designer / UX Lead
Responsibilities: Product Strategy, UX/UI Design, Information Architecture, Prototyping, Web Design
Platform: Responsive Web + Mobile App Vision
Year: 2026
Status: Live / Ongoing

I led the product direction from broad vision through to roadmap, core journeys, and launch priorities.

Direction: translated the ministry's wider digital vision into a structured product roadmap and defined the first member experiences.

Prioritisation: decided what needed to be built for the first release, what could remain external, and what belonged in later phases.

Stakeholder alignment: worked with ministry leadership to shape expectations, clarify priorities, and keep the product aligned with the community’s needs.

Product principle: established that the digital experience should extend the physical ministry community rather than replace it.

A growing community without a central digital home

The Covering was growing across live events, creative programmes, teaching and community activity, but its digital experience was fragmented across different platforms.

For someone discovering The Covering for the first time, there wasn't one clear journey to understand the community, discover what was happening, attend an event and stay connected.

At the same time, we recognised a wider challenge within the creative community: many talented people have gifts and ideas but lack a clear pathway to discover their purpose, develop their talents and turn their creativity into sustainable opportunities.

The design challenge

How might we create a safe, faith-centred digital ecosystem that helps creatives discover their purpose, develop their talents, connect with community and create sustainable opportunities from their gifts?

Understanding the people behind the platform

Before defining the solution, I looked at how people were already interacting with The Covering across its existing community, events and digital channels.

Two interconnected needs emerged: people needed a simpler way to engage with The Covering today, while creatives needed a clearer pathway for developing their gifts over time.

I identified two core journeys

The Community Journey

Discover → Understand → Attend → Join → Participate

For someone new to The Covering, the experience needed to answer:

What is The Covering?
Is this community for me?
What's happening?
How can I attend?
How do I get involved?

The Creative Journey

Discover → Develop → Connect → Create → Earn → Give Back

For creatives, the opportunity went beyond attending events. The longer-term experience could support people as they discover their purpose, develop their talents, build relationships, create work and find sustainable opportunities.

Key Insight

People weren't simply looking for more content. They needed clearer pathways to belonging, growth and opportunity.

The roadmap for The Covering was shaped through a blend of stakeholder conversations, community observation, existing channel analysis, live event behaviour, and informal usability feedback.

I spoke with church leadership to understand priorities, expectations, and the wider digital vision. I also observed how members already engaged through WhatsApp, church events, prayer requests, and other community touchpoints, which helped me understand where digital habits already existed and where friction remained.

This research highlighted four important themes. Members were already comfortable using familiar channels, so the first digital experience needed to feel simple rather than disruptive. Registration, profiles, prayer requests, and events emerged as meaningful early journeys. It also became clear that the website should work alongside existing tools such as WhatsApp and Eventbrite rather than trying to replace them immediately.

These insights directly shaped the product strategy. I prioritised a website-first approach, focused Phase One on the clearest high-value journeys, retained useful external tools where they were already working well, and centred the product around one key principle:

The digital experience should extend the physical community, not replace it.

That principle became a guide for how I approached the wider ecosystem, from the first website release through to the longer-term app vision.

BUILDING THE DIGITAL HOME

From fragmented communication to one connected experience.

The first phase focused on creating a central digital home for The Covering, bringing key community experiences together within one accessible platform.

WEBSITE • RESPONSIVE EXPERIENCE • COMMUNITY PLATFORM

Turning an ambitious vision into an evolving product roadmap

The opportunity for The Covering extended far beyond a website.

The original vision was to create a digital ecosystem that could support community, creativity and purpose, eventually helping members move from discovering their gifts towards developing them and accessing meaningful opportunities.

Building everything at once, however, would have introduced unnecessary complexity.

I therefore defined a phased product strategy that prioritised immediate community needs while creating foundations for the longer-term vision.

As the project developed, and particularly through the SIT experience, the roadmap evolved to place greater emphasis on the ongoing relationship between physical gatherings and digital community.

Initial roadmap → Community learning → Evolved product strategy

From roadmap to real-world learning

The product strategy established the long-term direction for The Covering, but I also wanted the future experience to reflect how the community actually gathers, worships, creates and connects.

SIT 2026 became an important reference point.

Rather than viewing the conference simply as a standalone event, I used the experience to think more deeply about the relationship between The Covering’s physical gatherings and its future digital ecosystem.

SIT brought together many of the behaviours the product needed to support:

Worship · Teaching · Prayer · Creativity · Community · Events · Next steps

This revealed a larger product opportunity:

How might the digital experience continue what begins in the room?

The question shifted my thinking.

Rather than designing an app that simply replicated website content, I began exploring how the product could extend the member journey after an event ends.

A moment of worship could become content someone revisits later.

A teaching session could become saved notes, scriptures and reflection.

A prayer moment could lead into an ongoing prayer request or community interaction.

A new connection could continue through a profile or group.

An event could become the beginning of a longer journey rather than the end of one.

Translating the event into product opportunities

SIT helped me identify six areas where the digital experience could extend what was already happening within the physical community:

Extending SIT beyond the event

One concept that emerged from this thinking was a dedicated SIT event hub.

Rather than allowing the experience to disappear after the day itself, the app could provide a place to revisit:

Session recordings · Worship · Key scriptures · Prayer points · Photography · Testimonies · Next steps

This could turn a one-day gathering into an ongoing digital journey.

Product principle insight

The app should not replace the physical community. It should help the community stay connected to what began there.

Website
Membership flows
Community structure
Prayer requests
Event experience
Product roadmap
App concept
Digital strategy

The project reinforced the importance of sequencing product ambition. Starting with immediate community needs created a clearer foundation for a broader ecosystem, while live community experiences helped reveal where digital tools could add value without replacing physical connection.

User testing
Member interviews
Prioritise MVP features
Prototype key journeys
Define content governance
Explore technical architecture for the app