Helping users vote with confidence and view better candidates for them in one app.

Role

UX Designer

category

UX Design, Mobile App (iOS), Branding

problem space

Voting isn't as simple as it seems. There are so many elections for so many officials, and there's never enough time in the day to keep up with their voting records. Users need a more straight forward way to find politicians who are aligned with them.

Solution

By collecting secondary research, qualitative data, and interviewing young voters in NYC between the ages of 18-29, I identified core pain points, motivations, and behaviors. Those data points were used to inform my design strategy to better identify which candidates were best to represent the user in public office.

Key Findings

• 84% of users expressed a lack of confidence in who to vote for, but after testing the prototype, 92% said they gained confidence.
• Taking a political survey to match with candidates was a feature that users expressed excitement for.
• Users liked the ability to toggle between state, local, and national elected officials.

discover + define

Discover + Define

Voting : An act of confusion

Voting can feel like a laborous task with little to no instruction manual. Most of the time, national politics will take the spotlight within mainstream media, and it's usually about a candidate who doesn't even represent the voter. This causes civic fatigue, confusion, and hopelessness.

Goals

• Simplify research for elections
• Instill confidence in young voters
• Increase state and local politics literacy
  

Problem Statement

Young voters within the United States want to change the way things are run in this country, but do not feel like they know as much as other voters, and are likely to note vote because of it.

How Might We

How might we empower NYC voters between the ages of 18-20 feel confident about their local, state, and national political voting decicisons?

Secondary Research + Industry Interview

Research creates the foundation with which we'll build on! To define my How Might We above, I let my curiosity lead my search.

Secondary Research

The secondary research that was found painted a clear story: Young voters (76%) feel that they have the power to change the way things are run in this country, however half of these voters (50%) feel that they don't have enough information as other people, and this leads to not voting entirely (20%).

Industry Interview

I spoke to Joseph Graeney, a former Congressional Intern and Senior Manager for Policy Outreach at the Millenial Action Project in order to get his expertise.

• He says that Local and State governments are extremely important, but because of Legacy Media's reduced coverage, it stays out of the public's eye more so than our National politics overall
• Over the past 50 years, there's been an emergence of "Political Celebrities". The process has incentivized these elected officials to prioratize spin than governing.
• There are so many elections that can take place, it can be difficult to manage feeling prepared for each one. Sometimes a ballot for a judge can go overlooked by votes. (Myself included!)

Discover + Define

User Interviews

For anonymity, I've used random pictures and names for our interviewers. 

• Each interviewee expressed a lack of confidence throughout the voting process, though the amount varied per person.
• Each interviewee handled "not knowing" something differently. Some didn't vote at all, some researched, and some found themselves blindly voting down ballot.
• 2 out of 3 of the interviewee's felt that their National representatives (President, Senator, House Member) could help them more than their local or state government.

Persona

After analyzing my research and user interviews, I created my persona, Gerald, in order to empathize with the user during this journey. We want Gerald to feel confident and energized to engage civically! 

Discover + Define

Task Flow

As a user Gerald wants to look up their state senator so that he feels confident she's accurately representing him.

Discover + Define

Ideate. Design. Test. Repeat.

The core of the UX process! I conducted user tests with 15 different users across three different rounds. Changes were plotted on a design priority matrix and that created a design strategy to implement changes.

User Test Findings - Round 1

• Overall, users didn't quite understand the home screen, and felt like they didn't know what to do.
  
• Users expressed they felt there was a lot of unlabeled information on the screen that caused them to feel stressed and confused.
• Users did not know what "JUN 27th"meant.
• A lot of users did not instantly know where the search button was located.

User Test Findings - Round 2

• Overall, users felt now that there was too much signaling copy on the screen which overwhelmed them.
• Users did not know that the 2x3 cards were their recently searched items.
• Users could not find where to view their elected officials.
• Users were unsure if updating their locatoin
• Users liked the dedicated "Upcoming Election" section.

User Test Findings - Round 3

• Users liked having their elected officials at the start of the page.
• Users were confused about "what's new" meant. News? Newly elected officials?.
• Users expressed feeling "cluttered". I assumed this was caused to the "Your Elected Officials" container existing with a filled frame.
• Users expressed confusion again if one is supposed to update their location in the profile or in settings.

Final Design

Develop+Design

Develop + Design

Key Features

I built out a couple of key features that were generated through authored user stories that helped ease Gerald's pain points.

• Current elected officials displayed on Gerald's home screen
• Sample Ballot access
• Location setting to only receive information about Gerald's representatives and candidates
• Political Survey that can show Gerald the best representatives and candidates based on his values.

A note:

The political survey will require some collaboration with Data Scientists who have a background in political science. Since this is core to the purpose of the app, the prototype functions as if Gerald has already taken the survey. 

final insights

Final Insights

Next Steps

With more time and funding, I'd split my time revisiting parts of the process, as well as looking to building out features.

Revisit:

• Find more users to test with using the greyscale wireframes.
• Refine UI elements along with my lifelong growth as a designer.
  

Future Thinking:

• Partner with a Data Scientist who has a political science background.
• Secure funding through various grants and partnerships 
• Continue usability testing when survey is built out.

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