PartyVote '18
How might we encourage young people to become more engaged and committed voters?
As a personal matter, I’m interested in getting younger voters engaged with politics and voting. Younger voters are significantly less likely to vote than older voters. For example in the last election, 70 percent of those over 70 years old voted. By contrast, only 43 percent of those under 25 did. As part of the research for this application, we determined that a lot of it was concern about making the ‘wrong’ decision on the ballot. Our hypothesis is that working in small groups to lessen the burden of research could help lessen this. I worked out this mobile app as a way for small groups of trusted friends to help each other research and make voting decisions together as a group.
Design Process
After looking into voting habits and behavior, it became clear that there are a set of voters who are consistently put off from voting because they felt that research and making voting decisions was “too hard” due to the length and complexity of the ballot and issues.
Research Plan and Methodology // Discussion Guide // Synthesized Research
Irregular voters are looking for ways to make voting research easier and less time-consuming because they want to have maximum effect on the political process with the minimum effort.
I believe that by creating a mobile application that lets irregular voters spread the effort needed for making voting decisions across a small group of trusted friends, they will be able to reduce the time needed to prepare to vote. Additionally, the group will provide support for each other to engage with the voting process.
I’ll know this to be true initially when we see engagement within the app like chat activity, scheduling for Election Day and recommendations. Long-term I’ll look at indicators like increased turnout and post-election engagement with the app.
I worked through several iterations of logical flow to work out design and user requirements as well as developmental needs.
This led to a list of functions necessary for the MVP experience as well as others for down the road
There were also a number of rounds of wireframe and design revision to create a highly functional and attractive interaction. The goal is to create a friction-less experience where users can quickly take care of the tasks they are responsible.
This flow shows how a user finds and makes a recommendation for one of the items on their list.
This flow shows how a user can share and schedule voting together on election day