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Bible App for Android Auto

Bible App for Android Auto

Overview

Role: Product Designer
Platform: Android Auto
Timeline: 1 Month
Shipped: Google Play Store, September 2026

The opportunity

As of 2025, 40% of U.S. adults who've recently driven or ridden in a car have CarPlay or Android Auto in their primary vehicle. 83% of Americans 18+ who have been in a car in the last month and have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, use either platform. Meaning, those who have either technology in their cars use it SSRS, 2025.


Around 70% of the world's phones run Android (StatCounter, 2025), roughly 4 billion active devices. Large share of the Bible App's users have Android phones. This project is for the people in that group who drive a relatively modern car with Android Auto.

Goals

Primary — Enable easier engagement with Scripture while driving.
Secondary — Explore use cases that enhance current functionality of Bible App for CarPlay

The Process

First, I found public libraries in the Figma Community to design the app as close as possible to the real one. I also mapped out the screen sized Android Auto supports to understand different screen ratios the app would need to support. From there, I used the existing Bible App for CarPlay designs as a reference and rebuilt the experience with Android Auto's own components.

Discoveries

  • Android Auto is heavily constrained. You get a fixed set of templates and components, and almost nothing custom is allowed.
  • Designing for Android Auto is less about designing a new app, but designing a media player for one that already exists. If a feature isn't in the phone app, it can't exist in the car.
  • Design process more structural than visual. I was mostly designing architecture of pages and flows.

The product call: MVP vs. full

I designed the full experience first — saved plans, an Explore section, per-plan progress — then drew a clear line for what shipped. The MVP keeps the two things drivers came for (the audio Bible and their current plans) and strips anything that adds taps or glance time:

  • No saved-plans library or Explore section
  • No progress bar on "Continue Day X"
  • No secondary text on the Versions list

Designing for the drive

Driving changes what "good" means, so the edge cases got the same care as the happy path:

  • Translation gaps — asking by voice for a book that isn't in the current translation returns a plain explanation, not an empty screen.
  • Offline mode — losing signal in a tunnel shows a designed state, not a dead screen.

Outcome

Shipped to the Google Play Store, September 2026.

Collaborators: Andy Knight (CarPlay design), Jacob Allenwood (Android engineering).