Making daily prayer more personal and accessible
Product Design
Project Duration
3 months
An app helping second-generation Muslims track and catch up on missed prayers through gamification and social accountability.
Who for
Catch up Salah, a company on a mission to help individuals manage their spiritual life whilst living in the west
My Role
Product Designer, UX Researcher, Workshop Facilitator
Collaboration
App developers and stakeholders
The Problem
Many Muslims have a backlog of missed prayers, known as Qada, but no clear or motivating way to track and catch up on them. Existing tools focus on daily prayer times but ignore the emotional weight and practical challenge of making up what has been missed.
Discovery
Process & Approach
We ran two participatory workshops with users and consulted Islamic scholars to understand the root causes of missed prayers. The first workshop surfaced emotional and practical barriers through sentence completion prompts.
The second invited users to co-generate ideas based on those insights, giving them ownership over the direction. Alongside this we conducted market research to assess how existing tools approached the same challenge.
Define
Understanding why prayers get missed
From the research we identified that users needed both structure and motivation. The design centred on a goal-based dashboard to track missed prayers, a social layer with a friends and family leaderboard, and a rewards system where users earn prayer mats instead of generic badges. Stakeholder feedback pushed for a stronger timeline, more visible gamification, and spiritual inspiration embedded throughout the interface.
Develop
A structured and social way to catch up
Following stakeholder review, the core navigation was restructured around two tabs: To-Do for missed prayers and Daily for current ones. This separation gave users a clearer mental model and reduced the friction of managing both at once. Early sketches evolved into a refined high-fidelity prototype that balanced functionality with a calm, focused visual tone.
Delivery
App focused on creating a community and helping each other
The app was designed around the idea that catching up on prayers is easier when you don't do it alone. Users can see when friends and family complete prayers, motivating them to do the same. A shared leaderboard and a rewards system using prayer mats rather than generic badges kept the experience rooted in faith rather than just habit tracking.
validated demand and reduced prayer anxiety
79% of people said they would benefit from the app, and 88% said it would make them feel less anxious about their prayers. The research confirmed a genuine unmet need and validated the direction of the design.