World Youth Day

World Youth Day (WYD) is an event that aims to gather young people from all over the world around the Pope. This celebration of youth occurs every two, three, or four years. In 2023, it happened in Lisbon, Portugal, so Bliss Applications and MEO teamed up to create the official app for the WYD — Lisboa 2023.

During the WYD, several initiatives are organized all across the city. The highlights are the central events — the celebrations in which the Pope is present — such as the opening mass, the Vigil, and the Way of the Cross.

World Youth Day (WYD) is an event that aims to gather young people from all over the world with the Pope. This celebration of youth occurs every two, three, or four years. In 2023, it happened in Lisbon, Portugal.

During the WYD, several initiatives are organized all across the city. The highlights are the central events — the celebrations in which the Pope is present — such as the opening mass, the Vigil, and the Way of the Cross.

With that in mind, Bliss Applications and MEO teamed up to create the official app for the WYD.

In the research phase, we analyzed some platforms and leveraged the WYD branding guidelines to create a UI Concept that visually unifies all digital tools and increases brand effectiveness.

Work sessions with the WYD team helped us identify user needs and define the app’s features. We also tested the layouts with real users to ensure everything met their needs.

We created a UI library based on NativeBase to help us ensure a consistent user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design across both iOS and Android platforms.

Creating a library of reusable UI components and patterns that can easily translate into React Native code saved us development time and ensured design consistency.

React Native was one of the main technologies used to develop the mobile application. It allowed us to build a single codebase that can run on both iOS and Android platforms. The result was an app that feels and performs like a natively developed one, providing a smooth and responsive user experience.

Developing a secure app for a large event like WYD is not just a technical challenge but also a commitment to the safety and trust of its users.

Data privacy, authentication and authorization, secure communication, protection against cyberattacks, third-party integrations, monitoring, and logging are critically important in such a significant event with time constraints.

Using an integrated set of tools was critical to keeping our team aligned and guaranteeing collaboration. These tools allowed us to deliver and discuss research results (Miro), design unique layouts, share them with the client, code and catalog components, store deliverables (Figma), create and manage the project backlog, and track progress (DevOps).

The Lisboa 2023 app had everything pilgrims needed. Users could discover WYD’s main events on the Agenda and locate them on the Map. Up2Pray had all spiritual contents (text and audio), allowing users to follow the masses’ readings and chants.

Enforcing the WYD commitment to sustainability, the Carbon Footprint Calculator allowed users to know their carbon impact during the event and discover ways to mitigate it.

Once logged in to the app, users could access relevant information on their Profile, such as their food package, the location of their Rise Up meetings, and their allocated sectors in Campo da Graça.