Voter is an IOS app designed to help young Americans vote more confidently in the electoral process. Regardless of your party, Voter aims to provide simplified non-partisan information about your candidates and on topics, you might find on your particular ballot.
It allows you to compare your candidates, learn about your candidates past votes and current values, and you can add your preferred candidate to your list so you're ready on election day.
From January 2022-April 2022, I completed a full-time UX Design Bootcamp at BrainStation to receive a diploma in UX Design. Throughout the course, I was assigned to complete a 10-week capstone project to create a realistic digital solution to a unique problem. This digital experience would take me through the end-to-end ux design process form the conception of the idea and research to the design and branding of the mobile solution.
From January 2022-April 2022, I completed a full-time UX Design Bootcamp at BrainStation to receive a diploma in UX Design. Throughout the course, I was assigned to complete a 10-week capstone project to create a realistic digital solution to a unique problem. This digital experience would take me through the end-to-end ux design process form the conception of the idea and research to the design and branding of the mobile solution.
Voting can be a difficult space to navigate especially as a young adult when you don't feel prepared to vote. Young voters are less engaged in the electoral process and vote at lower rates than older age groups creating a lack of representation in our current political landscape.
Many may think young adults are just uninterested in the electoral process and don't care about voting, but research shows us that the cause of low youth turnout has been misdiagnosed. Though it is true, that the rate of participation in young voter turnout in U.S. elections is historically much lower than that of other age groups. Research tells us:
of 18- to 29-year-olds said they are interested in politics
of 18- to 29-year-olds said they care who gets elected
of 18- to 29-year-olds said they intend to vote
Though it is true, that the rate of participation in young voter turnout in U.S. elections is historically much lower than that of other age groups. Research tells us:
To learn a little more about why young voters are disengaged I virtually spoke with 5 young American voters between the ages of 23-30 to understand how they navigate the political landscape and learn about their behaviors, pain points and motivations. I was less interested in who my users aligned with and more interested in what kept them from voting, or what would make them more prepared and likely to vote.
I synthesized my interview insights and organized them into themes to help navigate the most impactful focal point. The top themes I took away were:
Though all of these insights posed very important problems to focus on one could make an immediate impact.
Political and & civic education affected the user in the past, not quite helping current users in need of support. I would like to put a pin in education to revisit in our future steps. Alleviating the time required to dedicate to voting would be solved if we focused on the pain point of Insufficient Credible information.
After synthesizing my primary research and learning about the pain points motivations and behaviors I finally had enough information to create our user persona. This persona would allow me to constantly keep her in the forefront of my mind when designing and when considering solutions, taking the “me” out of the equation.
To help guide me, I needed to put myself into Chloe’s mind to craft the current landscape of my user's experience when preparing to vote. Chole’s journey allowed me to pinpoint the moment of opportunity just before she experiences a negative emotion and have a clear understanding of what could be done to alleviate that negative experience.
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How might we empower young American voters so that they can confidently engage in the electoral process?
With all the prior research we did, I now felt in a position where I felt comfortable identifying possible solutions. I created about 30 user stories that I organized into 5 epics. As I crafted my user stories I began to think of the features holistically, what are the pain points that Chloe faces, from start to finish during the voting season, from preparation to casting a ballot.
After organizing them into their epics I focused on the user story that best aligned with Chloe’s goals, pain points, our HMW question, and the best value proposition. Based on my key insight of “Insufficient Credible Information”, Chloe's goal is to be able to find trustworthy unbiased information on all candidates local and federal so that she feels well informed and confident when she votes.
Once I landed on my primary task flow I collected ui component and functionality assets for my UI inspiration board, I began ideating these features into exploratory sketches creating many variations per screen searching the ideal layout for my solution. It was important to consider readability considering my app would be a heavy source of information.
With all of my sketches I focused on the key features that I wanted to bring into my mid-fi wireframes. From these key features I drew up my solution sketch for each of my screens. These solution sketches were expanded into our initial prototype
Once my mid-fi prototype was complete it was time to put it to the test. I conducted 2 round of user tests with 5 testers in each round. My users were given 5 tasks to complete, the feedback I received directed the changes for the second iteration
I took a pause here to figure out what I wanted my users to feel when approaching the app. I took into consideration my demographic and the current landscape and energy of my topic. We can all agree that voting and politics can be overwhelming and boring, but just because the topic has been previously presented in a dry manner doesn't mean that's how it has to be.
When designing my watermark I was looking for ways to combine color, clever symbolic representation, movement, and connection. How could I derive connection to my theme tastefully? Stars, stripes, colors, and checkmarks came to mind when thinking about my topic. I explored variations of each of these. Below you will find my final design.
I took a moment to figure out what I wanted my prototype to express. What can it say with just one look? Buzzwords top of mind that lead my exploration were: connection, strength, unity, casual, youthful.
Accessibility was a very important topic to me and in this app. If this app is to help every young American there are many considerations I needed to take to ensure it was accessible to the masses. First and foremost I needed to ensure my design considered the visual, cognitive, learning, and neurological abilities. All of my colors used for navigating and legibility passed AA compliance using webaim.org.
Considering all of my feedback from my final user tests I was ready to inject my visual brand identity into the app. It was more challenging than I anticipated. When injecting color it was important to me to ensure that the colors were used intentionally. The red and blues are symbolic of the republican and democratic colors and I wanted to use them as equally as possible so as to stay non-partisan, so a third color was necessary for me to use. I started out using purple as the 60% color injection but found it completely changed the tone of my design. I wanted it to feel youthful, bright, confident, but the purple made the app feel calm and too boring. So I needed to pivot. I landed on a yellow-orange to bring in the energy of excitement and enthusiasm that this topic usually does not offer
The marketing website needed to reflect a youthful rebirth of what political information sources could be. My goal with this site was to evoke somewhat of a counter-culture style to the current political climate. Currently, politics is divisive, not relatable, and intense. Though the topic holds a lot of weight and is important, it doesn't mean it can't be displayed in a more enjoyable manner.
My aim was to do this by providing a space that was relatable, interesting, and easy to understand mixed with a little humor so that the younger generation is enticed and gets the resources they need and want in a way they can easily understand.
Thinking about my users' possible future needs I explored other platforms that would benefit them. I landed on putting my efforts into a desktop web version of my app because my users would most likely be in the comfort of their home or studying at a library when they are heavy in research and making decisions. My users would need a larger platform to comfortably research and set up their rosters.
Voter could impact society in a large way, two very important things I thought would be important for the future of Voter.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
- Nelson Mandela
Empowering young adults to vote could impact the polls in a way that would better reflect our population. Thinking outside of my targeted users, not only would this app be helpful to young voters, it could be helpful to all generations or specifically those who feel silently insecure of their personal knowledge about politics and government, this tool would alleviate and support all users with the stresses of voting.
A few things I feel this app would need to do in order for users to have continuous trust in Voter is to stay unbiased and ensure security. The foundation of this app is built on unbiased information, the core value proposition. It would require it to stay that way in order to keep the users' trust. Because we are dealing with highly sensitive information we would need to consider ways to make the users information safe from the front end and back end like face recognition and a form of information encryption.
Conducting a few rounds of user tests to work out the final kinks in the app design. But looking toward expanding I really would love to explore some key features I saw to benefit my users like a login questionnaire that learns some of your key political interests, a siloed questionnaire or even a way for the app to learn about your values and match you with a candidate that aligns best with you, a feature to immediately find your polling location and notifications so you never miss out on any deadlines or political events. The goal would be to make this your one stop trusted shop for anything political.
I learned so much from this experience. Not limited to, but a few that really stuck out were, personally, I really need to understand my users' wants and needs to be able to design thoughtfully. I’m a loyal designer to my users and it is very important to me that I stay true to them and their needs.
It was of the most importance to ask “why” and relate it back to my HMW, person and insights. If I'm unsure of my next move, I need to write out my initial thoughts and find the questions I need answered to be able to ensure I'm on the right path, and to never be afraid of back stepping to find the right path.
