Pocket Politics
Promoting transparency, participation, and collaboration in local government.
Intro
It is early January in Chicago, one of the coldest days of the decade. Riley walks out of her apartment building as the icy chill hits her face. She looks down to avoid the wind and meets the eyes of a homeless man crouched in the corner of State and Elm. He asks if she can spare any change. “Sorry”, Riley replies as she turns away and continues to walk down the street. Plagued with guilt she asks herself what can be done on a bigger scale. This a systemic problem and just one of many daily encounters she has out of the many issues she has with her city. She is driven to act, but how?
This was our challenge as part of President Obama’s Open Government initiative, to bridge the the division of knowledge between citizens and their government.
Role
1 of 3 UX Designers
Timeframe
5 weeks, 4 sprints
Deliverables
Domain Research, Competitive Analysis, Persona, Journey Map, Site Map, MVP - Mid Fidelity Prototype, Annotated Wireframes
Tools Sketch, Figma
Notes
This was a case study I completed at Flatiron School’s UX Certification Program. This is not a real app but designed based on actual research, user interviews and usability testing.
Mid Fidelity Prototype Video
The Brief
We were asked to create a microsite for the city of Chicago that streamlined a way for citizens to access relevant information and to be able to communicate with their elected representatives. The aim of this project was to increase transparency, participation and collaboration in local government.
Research & Analysis
We familiarized ourselves on the topic of local city politics to find out how accessible the information was. Through domain research we discovered that information on city politics was overly abundant. There were sites within sites and hundreds of sites. Transparency, the first aim of the initiative was not the issue. We moved on to the other two: participation and collaboration.
Through secondary research of studies we were able to gather two main insights:
Citizens don’t trust city council but they have to engage in order for city council to work.
They are willing to participate if given the chance.
Key Takeaway:
The problem was not about transparency but about connecting with and understanding city government.
Competitive Analysis
With that we looked into platforms that already connect constituents to the city government. We found Chicago 311, Twitter and Countable which promote engagement and connect citizens to somebody already in power. We also found Chicago Councilmatic, the Skimm and Reddit which are platforms that offer digestible information about the political scene. With all these competitors, citizens have the ability to interact with politicians, are provided with information, and are connected to each other through a democratized forum.
Interviews & Insights
To dive deeper into the issue we Interviewed two subject matter experts: Tom Hartz, Mayor of Lake Geneva, WI and Barbara Smith-Warner of the Oregon House of Representatives.
.Through these interviews we were able to form additional hypotheses:
Government is failing to reach the people and the people working in the government don’t know why.
People tend not to engage with government unless something bad actually happens to them.
We interviewed men and women between the ages of 28-39 all living in the urban cities of Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and NYC. We chose this age group because secondary research showed us that younger people tend to be more apathetic* and it would be extremely difficult to get them involved. Older people were already overly represented and didn’t need the nudge. Millennials however were old enough to be politically aware but young enough that they didn’t feel like they had enough influence yet.
What We Wanted to Learn:
We asked them the following:
What are citizens most concerned about in today’s political climate?
Are citizens interested in participating in politics?
What is stopping them?
Key Takeaway:
Citizens were most concerned with the following issues: homelessness, poverty, gentrification, equal rights, traffic, injustice, and crime. They felt passionately but did not know how to act on those issues and they don’t trust politicians.
Interview Quotes:
“I think politicians are some of the worst people in the world”
— Andrew, User
“ I don’t feel like I have any say in how Chicago is run. I think I would have to have some power and authority, I don’t, so my voice is lost.”
—Colleen, User
Identifying the Problem
We now knew they have issues they were concerned about but didn’t know how to resolve them or even who to go to. We assumed the best way to help them was to solve the problems themselves however those problems were wide ranging systemic issues that we couldn’t solve. So, we revisited the data and found commonalities between all our users:
They became politically recently due to getting older or after the 2016 election.
They lacked knowledge on how government actually operated.
None felt they could directly connect to representatives.
People don’t think they have a say and don’t know how to be heard even if they did. We needed to show them they had a voice and how to use it to leverage the system to solve the issues they cared about. What we needed to do was to help our users help themselves. We were now able to define what we needed to solve for and re-introduce our target user.
Problem Statement
The politically aware Chicagoan who does not engage with government but would like to needs a simple straightforward way to educate themselves, voice their opinion and be heard by legislators so that they can effect change on the issues that matter to them.
The Persona
Riley, the Politically Aware Chicagoan
“Homelessness, poverty, and violence are all just one in the same...trying to find how to fix all of that. It’s hard to find resources readily accessible and be able to [say] this is what I stand for, who can I complain to?”
Motivation A desire to engage in politics based on recent political events.
Goal To learn more about local politics so she can influence local policy.
Frustration Navigating government is overwhelming and she doesn’t feel like her opinion matters.
Riley’s Journey
Design Principles
With the area of opportunity identified and Riley’s values in mind, we came up with these these three design principles. Riley learns about the issues that matter to her, is left more informed, and allows her access to the government which gives her a voice.
Initial Concepts & Testing
We brainstormed dozens of ideas based on what the users wanted:
Their voice to be heard
Near instant feedback
Connection with others
Simple ways to engage with government
We merged similar ideas and narrowed them down to four concepts to test.
Through testing we dropped Concept 2 because it wasn’t sufficiently educating people nor was it solving for our problem statement. We dropped Concept 4 because users thought it was a fun idea but admitted they wouldn’t actually use it.
The Concepts
Concept 1
A personality quiz to help users figure out how to engage with government
Usability Insights
Users enjoyed having content curated to their interests.
Users did not like being told who they were and how to engage with government.
Concept 3
A platform that translates dense political jargon into easily digestible information and allows users to act.
Usability Insights
Users liked that it was an idea they had never seen before. Some of them said “if this existed, I’d definitely use it”.
Users were confused by some terminology, but we saw this as an opportunity to keep refining our idea of education
We converged Concept 3 and Concept 1 to form our solution.
Final Concept Statement
A mobile application that educates users about the process of engaging with government via direct action in order to provide feedback and data to legislators who have the power to act on their behalf.
App Map
Wireframes
We went through two rounds of iterations refining our MVP to allow the user to achieve three main functions.
1) Onboard: Sets location and curates interests.
2) Take Action: Access to legislatures providing the user with a voice.
3) Gain Knowledge: Information that is summarized and simplified.
Results
Overall users described this product as informative, easy to navigate and something they haven’t seen. Our users felt they were educated on topics they cared about but could’ve been provided more explanation on how local government operates. Their enthusiasm about the product fueled their desire to do more.
Future Vision
We want to Increase opportunity for learning, expand functionality to allow users to take more action than simply leaving an opinion and we are going to integrate social interaction in order to amplify the voice of the user fostering connectivity and growth. These refinements will make sure our users keep talking and start doing.
Reflections
The best ideas even if well received aren’t necessarily always the best solutions as shown through Concept 4 of tag. As a group we felt really excited about this concept thinking it was the most creative and engaging concept that resulted from our brainstorming. It was voted as one of the most memorable and interesting features during concept ranking. It was immediately de-prioritized however when it came to the question of whether users would actually use the feature. This process of concept testing taught me the importance of practicality when it came to achieving a truly functional and useful design solution.
This experience also served as a reminder to not be too attached to our ideas. The act of letting go of an idea we loved reaffirmed the principle that as a designer, we are not who we design for; to really put the users first and see through their lenses.
