Identify the pain points associated with the voting process. Consider voters who don't keep up on political news or candidates. Make the act informed voting easier and more accessible.
Tonya is a college student trying to pay for college and maintain good grades. She cares about politics and tries to stay up to date on issues that are important to her. Sometimes it is difficult to keep track of who her representatives are and what efforts they are making.
Jonah is married with 3 kids and cares about local politics and his kids' school policies. He has considered running for office because it sounds interesting. He would like an easier way to find information needed to seek office.
Mira is a retired teacher living with her husband. Her kids are grown but visit weekly with grandchildren. She enjoys watching and reading online news. She is interested in politics and finds it difficult to keep track of all that is going on.
This User Journey was done for Jonah to step through his attempt to run for city council. Researching the steps for seeking office helped understand how the process could be improved through our new app.
The goal of the competitive audit was to compare the experience of each competitor's political information app as a new user. Three apps on the market were chosen to be installed and audited. Desktop options for each app were also factored in.
Prior to ideating on solutions with storyboards and wireframes we were asked to define the objective with a goal statement to help focus our approach
After the competitor analysis and goal statement I began sketching wireframes and storyboards to try to document a variety of different approaches. At this stage I was more interested in "outside the box" ideas while also including a thorough collection of straight forward designs
The main focus was making it very easy to find each users polling station, representatives, information on current bills and details on how to seek office. Contacting representatives was also something that should be easy.
After completing a working prototype in figma I began the usability study with 5 participants. The feedback was very helpful and is shown in themes below with quotes from different users along with observations.
Most of the issues discovered in the usability study had to do with issues finding polling locations and confusion with the 'seeking office' flow.
The results of the usability study emphasized the need to add a polling location finder to the home page
The second most prevalent insight from the study was to reduce the number of 'Interested in Seeking Office' buttons, which caused confusion
When a user chooses to seek office the app provides information and required forms. A checklist is provided to ensure users understand necessary steps.
The navigation menu includes an "Elections" icon which takes users to the "Upcoming Elections" screen. Also included is the "Your Local Polling Station" button which can help users navigate to polling locations based upon their registered address.
Users can see what each representative has supported or voted against. The user can find their elected officials and easily email each official regarding various issues. User emails are addressed from their login email address.
Users can research current national, state and local bills along with news regarding each bill. Users can also vote on whether they support a bill and see what other users think.
Efforts were made to keep button sizes and text consistent throughout the system. The palette used green as the primary color because the app is focused on tracking time for paychecks (similar to many banking palettes).