Lectio-365 is the daily devotional app from 24-7 Prayer. We built the original back in 2019 and since then we’ve done a whole load of work to grow and evolve the product. This has included the latest redevelopment and re-platforming from native script to React Native. This ensures that we’re working with the most up-to-date, industry-standard tech, future proofing it for the long term. The Lectio 365 app has lived long in our hearts, and we’re really proud of the project.
We’ve been working with 24-7 Prayer to build an app that has grown over the years. This in itself has placed a number of challenges on our team. The original app was made for one prayer a day (in English). Now the app has three different spiritual practices, starting with Lectio Divina in the morning and ending with the Examen at night, in English and Spanish. Each of these prayer slots (morning, midday, and evening) has its own themes (colours, images etc).
The latest version was designed by ‘Wonderful’ with us speaking in to how the development team could outwork the designs. We worked with the designers to bring clarity around questions of accessibility (such as clear colour contrast and text size). As we went into development, we ensured the app had key accessibility features (voice over / talk back). We are passionate about ensuring as many people as possible can access the products we create, and so speaking into the design phase was vital for our development phase. The key thing we learnt here was the more we collaborated at these early stages and the more we could input, the fewer issues we would face down the line, resulting in a better product, and happy people all round.
Our team of James, Finn and Tom worked with React Native to build the front end, and Laravel Nova on the back end. Through this, the team at 24-7 Prayer can add and change their content - a much-needed feature for an app with three different themes a day!
Lectio-365 has grown from a simple idea to see classical monastic practices outworked in the busy modern era, to a global movement combining ideas ancient and modern. Our development team have had to adapt and grow with these changes. What started as a simple devotional app, has become a much larger project, with UX work, pop-ups, and massive expansion from the original project, all part of how we now see the project. We believe that our desire to grow, change and improve within projects is expressed clearly through Lectio, we are proud of what it has become.
