About

GIA Publications, Inc. is a family-owned business that has been providing resources for sacred music since its establishment in 1941. Its extensive collection includes over 10,000 choral and instrumental editions, hymnals, recordings, music education resources, and a licensing division. In 2013, the renowned choral publisher Walton Music joined GIA, and in 2020, both World Library Publications (WLP) and Meredith Music also became a part of the GIA family. To explore GIA's sacred music resources, visit www.giamusic.com.

We were delighted and honored to have had the opportunity to digitize such an incredible company and introduce it to the world of mobile devices.

Hymnals, the solution we have built, is an impressive app that provides access to all the essential elements of your favorite hymnal, and more, on your iPad. The app is free, and you can purchase the best-selling Roman Catholic hymnals from GIA Publications, Inc. using an in-app purchase.

Location & Date

Chicago, Illinois, US

March 2023

Challenge

A few years after the initial implementation of the Hymnals app, an update was required to support newer devices and add new features. However, it was crucial to maintain the app's current appearance and user experience to ensure that existing users can continue using it seamlessly. Additionally, it was essential to ensure that the users could switch from the old app to the new one without any loss of data or previously purchased hymnals.

Key results

While incorporating the latest iOS design guidelines, the app now has a cleaner and fresher appearance. Despite the changes, all the functionalities and behaviors of the old app have been maintained. Furthermore, new features, requested by users, have been added to the app.

Main features

• Buy and download hymnals 

• Back up your hymnals, imported music, service list, and annotations to the cloud with your giamusic.com account.

• Edit, annotate, or duplicate pages of a hymn

• Turn pages with AirTurn and PageFlip Bluetooth pedals

• Import music from Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, or any other file storage you use on your device

Our contribution

This was a product developed end-to-end by X2 Mobile

• UX & UI design

• Native Mobile Development

• QA

• Project Management

Tools & Tech Stack

Hymnals was developed using Swift (iOS) native development, and Sketch for the UI part.