Know Your Vote

Know Your Vote is a tool for voters to identify, learn about, and contact their representatives in government, allowing them to advocate for issues and be more prepared on election day.

*please note that Know Your Vote was made in response to a practice brief through Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate program

iOS Application

Product

Principal UX Designer

Role

Figma, Google Design, Adobe Illustrator

Tools

1. Empathize

As someone deeply interested in politics, I have always been the friend that explains current political events to my friends. I noticed that almost every time a friend asks me a political-ish question, they begin with “this is a dumb question, but…” But the reality is that their question is not dumb. Rather, we operate in an intensely complicated political system that is not easily or quickly understood. I wanted to design something that helped people, like my friends, understand and navigate the system a bit easier, and hopefully remove barriers to participating in politics.

To gain a deeper understanding of potential users, I completed a series of empathy exercises using two personas:

Allison Smith

18-year-old student from San Diego California.

Allison is going to be voting for the first time this November and wants to be an informed voter. She finds it hard to figure out who represents her and what issues they support. She wants to be able to research who will be on her ballot before Election Day.

David Moore

46-year-old non-profit Director who lives in Burlington, VT

David runs a non-profit that fights for gun control, that recently started six new chapters in cities across the US. While planning for the new chapters, David wants to familiarize himself with the appropriate representatives and eventually establish working relationships.

2. Define

Problem

Allison is a first time voter, who needs to identify and remember the representatives running for office because she wants to be an informed voter.

David is a director of a non-profit who needs to identify and communicate with specific representatives across the United States, to grow his organization.

Solution

If Allison uses Know Your Vote, then she will be able to save information to refer back to on Election Day, and feel like an informed voter

If David uses Know Your Vote, then he will efficiently identify and communicate with representatives across the country.

3. Ideate

To begin the ideation phase, I started with a comprehensive competitive audit, to see what was already in the market. I researched two direct competitors, Ballotpedia and Common Cause, and one indirect competitor, the US Government’s representative ID tool.

In my research, I found that Ballotpedia does not have clear user flow from the home page, nor is the information hierarchy apparent. Overall, this makes the product hard to navigate. Similarly, Common Cause has a clunky navigation flow, due to different elements all being of the same size. It is hard for the user to discern what path to take to achieve their goals. Additionally, a few of the pages on the website might not be accessible for those with color blindness, as the color scheme does not conform to accessibility ratios.

While the US Government’s resource is simple and clear, it feels very old-fashioned and inaccessible— the buttons and text are small and the maps don’t function well with scrolling. These latter characteristics take away from the site’s successful clarity in identifying representatives.

COMPETITIVE AUDIT

VALUE PROPOSITION

Know Your Vote addresses these key needs that are currently missing in the market:

  1. To quickly find and research, and organize representatives that are relevant to each user

  2. To easily research a ballot before voting

To help visualize a user’s specific journey in Know Your Vote, I created various user flows. The following user flow denotes a user successfully identifying and favoriting their representatives.

USER FLOW & STORY BOARD

SITEMAP

USABILITY TEST

This user flow is also depicted in the following big-picture and close-up story boards.

To organize the different pages of the product and create a hierarchy, I created a first-draft of a sitemap.

To come up with as many ideas as possible, I used the “crazy eights” method of brainstorming. Here are my first few lo-fi wireframes for the homepage of Know Your Vote.

PAPER & DIGITAL WIREFRAMING

Then, I digitized my paper wireframes using Figma.

4. prototyping

After brainstorming multiple options for each page of the sitemap, I felt ready to move to lo-fi prototyping. I focused first on the user flow of identifying and favoriting a representative.

LO-FI PROTOTYPES

HI-FI PROTOTYPING

5. testing

4. PROTOTYPING (PART II)

Following testing, I felt comfortable moving on to creating a hi-fi prototype.

I look forward to oscillating between the stages in the design process until Know Your Vote serves its users in an efficient and effective way, creating informed voters and an informed public.

I conducted a usability study for Know Your Vote with five participants of varying ages and backgrounds. I measured the following research questions:

  1. How long does it take for users to find their representatives?

  2. How useful does users find the information in each representative’s profile?

  3. What path do most users take to add a representative to an existing favorites list?

  4. What path do most users take to add a representative to a new list?

  5. How would a user improve the favorites function?

Through the study, I found that the search function was not as intuitive as I thought it was. I observed that 4 out of 5 participants used the menu rather than the magnifying glass to search for representatives. This means that the function of the magnifying glass toward the bottom menu wasn’t obvious. Additionally, 3 out of 5 participants believe they successfully added someone to their list when clicking the star and didn’t actually select a list. This means that users didn’t know they had more of the task to complete.

After this study, I went back to my prototype an implemented the following changes:

  • Putting more focus on the search function by having the option to search for user’s representatives from the Home Screen

  • I added emphasis to the favorites menu pop-up by enlarging it and changing its color.