Orange's small group app, rebuilt in four months

Lead Small is Orange's app for small group leaders in children's and youth ministry, with each week's lesson, their group rosters, and training video. We redesigned it and rebuilt it in Flutter, and it launched on time and on budget for Orange's 2024 conference, with a seamless switch for its hundreds of thousands of existing users.

Client: Orange, curriculum for children’s and youth ministries
Built: A rebuild of the 2018 app for phones and tablets, on the platform we built for Orange in 2017
Services: Prototyping, UI/UX design, mobile development, API development, QA, project management
Stack: Flutter, Laravel, Mux
Engagement: Orange’s app platform from 2017 until Amazing Life acquired Orange in 2025, including this rebuild in 2024

Results

9 weeks
From first line of code to the App Store
99%
Code shared between iOS and Android
7+ years
Building and supporting Orange’s app platform

What changed

A new app for the leaders already using it

Going in

At launch

The app: Going inBuilt in 2018 and outgrown by six years of changing needs.; At launchA simpler app built around each week’s lesson, for phones and tablets.
The platform: Going inSix years of changes since the first app shipped.; At launchA new app on the same platform, with its API mapped as it runs today.
Training: Going inSlated for a later version.; At launchTraining video Orange curates and streams, shipped in the first release.
Users: Going inHundreds of thousands of leaders on the old app.; At launchA switch to the new app that was seamless for them.

How we hit the date

Four months from first screen to the conference

Orange needed the app designed, built, tested, and launched before its 2024 conference. Engineers took part in design, and tickets were written while screens were still in Figma, so the build started with its requirements ready.

Pick a direction
We learned the existing app, then showed Orange three interpretations of the Lead Small brand across real screens. Orange chose the minimalist one, and it set the visual language for every screen after.
Design the system
We designed high-fidelity screens on a Figma design system with tokens for color, spacing, and size, so each layout moves cleanly between phone and tablet. Restyled Material components sat beside custom ones to save time, and a clickable prototype showed Orange the flow and animations before any code was written.
Map the real API
We built the platform behind Lead Small for Orange in 2017. Six years of changes had outpaced its API documentation, so we captured and inspected the app’s network traffic to map the API as it runs today.
Write the tickets during design
While design was underway, our product owner wrote the build tickets with acceptance criteria, design references, and links to the updated API docs. All 100+ screens went to engineering annotated with how each feature behaves.
Build in two-week sprints
Flutter development ran in two-week sprints with daily standups and design support throughout. The planned release was done early enough to add training features slated for later, and the app launched on time and on budget.

What we built

Everything a small group leader needs each week

Lead Small puts a leader's lesson, group, and training in one app. We kept what existing users relied on and simplified the rest.

This Week
Each week’s lesson, by age group
Leaders pick their age group, from preschool through high school, and the This Week tab shows that week’s curriculum: the objective, the activities, and the reflection.
My Groups
Group rosters that stay on the phone
Leaders keep each member’s details and get birthday reminders. Sensitive group data stays on the device and is never sent online, while lessons and settings come from the server.
Training
Training video Orange curates
Administrators publish training videos that stream in the app through Mux, at a quality matched to each leader’s connection, in a player we designed.
Design system
A design system for what comes next
Tokens and components in Figma let Orange design new features faster as the app grows to serve new kinds of users and content.

Also in the app