Prior Professional Work

User Research · UX Design · Service Design

Redesigning the tools that connect pastors to congregations

A denomination's call process — how congregations find pastoral leadership and ministers find new ministry — ran on a legacy portal no one had ever formally researched. Aditi led the research, redesigned the forms in Figma, and mapped the system flows that became the foundation for a first-of-its-kind digital platform.

Partners

National nonprofit, faith sector

Role

Innovation Partner (in-house)

Timeline

2024 – 2026

Scope

Research · UX Design · Systems

Partners

National nonprofit, faith sector

Role

Innovation Partner (in-house)

Timeline

2024 – 2026

Scope

Research · UX Design · Systems

3

user groups researched across the call process

17+

pages-long form redesigned into a structured, navigable experience

4

end-to-end process flow maps delivered to IT

65

US-wide regional offices affected by the platform

THE Situation

The call process touches everyone in the denomination — pastors, congregations, and the synod staff who match them. But the portal supporting it had never been formally studied. Users worked around it: one Assistant to the Bishop kept a manual Excel spreadsheet to score candidate-congregation fit. Elderly call committee members needed phone walkthroughs just to log in. Session timeouts erased unsaved work. No one knew which sections of the form other people could see. The system carried enormous relational weight with almost no design behind it.

Phases of Work

Phase 1

Phase 1

Early 2024

Early 2024

Discovery & stakeholder conversations

Discovery & stakeholder conversations

Joined an initial cross-functional session with synod staff and Assistants to the Bishop to surface the landscape — constitutional constraints, manual workarounds, and years of accumulated frustration that had never been formally documented.

Joined an initial cross-functional session with synod staff and Assistants to the Bishop to surface the landscape — constitutional constraints, manual workarounds, and years of accumulated frustration that had never been formally documented.

Phase 2

Phase 2

Mid 2024

Mid 2024

Usability research on the existing portal

Usability research on the existing portal

Designed and led moderated usability sessions across all three user groups — a pastor, a deacon, a lay leader who had served on a call committee, and an Assistant to the Bishop. Synthesized findings into a prioritized research report, the first of its kind for this system.

Designed and led moderated usability sessions across all three user groups — a pastor, a deacon, a lay leader who had served on a call committee, and an Assistant to the Bishop. Synthesized findings into a prioritized research report, the first of its kind for this system.

Phase 3

Phase 3

Late 2024

Late 2024

Form redesign in Figma

Form redesign in Figma

Translated findings directly into a Figma prototype — restructuring the 17+ page flow into clearly sectioned, audience-aware forms with progress tracking, plain-language labels, and reduced cognitive load. First time design thinking had been applied to these forms.

Translated findings directly into a Figma prototype — restructuring the 17+ page flow into clearly sectioned, audience-aware forms with progress tracking, plain-language labels, and reduced cognitive load. First time design thinking had been applied to these forms.

Phase 4

Phase 4

2025–26

2025–26

Process flows & IT collaboration

Process flows & IT collaboration

Produced four end-to-end process flow maps covering the full system — form fill, live portal, activity log, and search — documenting how all entities interact. Worked directly with IT to translate these into a buildable platform.

Produced four end-to-end process flow maps covering the full system — form fill, live portal, activity log, and search — documenting how all entities interact. Worked directly with IT to translate these into a buildable platform.

What research surfaced

01

The form created anxiety

17+ pages with no sense of who could see each section. Ministers felt pressure to self-present optimally with no context for their audience.

02

Access fell hardest on the least tech-confident

Elderly call committee members needed synod staff walkthroughs just to log in. 10-minute timeouts wiped unsaved work. No autosave.

03

Language caused real confusion

"Mobility" — the portal's term for the call process — was not understood by most users. Field labels were interpreted very differently across groups.

04

Staff had built manual workarounds

At least one A2B maintained a separate Excel tracker to score candidate-congregation fit — a clear signal of what the platform wasn't doing.

Methods Used

Stakeholder interviews

Moderated usability testing

Think-aloud protocol

Insight synthesis

Figma prototyping

Form & content redesign

Process flow mapping

IT collaboration

Service blueprinting

Outcome

The redesigned forms and process flows became the foundation for a first-of-its-kind digital call process platform, now in active use across synods nationally. The engagement showed what becomes possible when a system that carries enormous human weight is finally studied, designed, and documented with the people it actually serves.

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© 2026 Soraxis Consulting · Design Strategy & Innovation by Aditi Shukla