POLITICOS

Politocos is a political accountability app that empowers users to vote on legislation & directly communicate with representatives.
VIEW PROTOTYPE

Product Summary

National voter turnout is almost the highest it has ever been, but there approximately 50% or more of the population continues not to vote. POLITICOS was created out of the frustration of the lack of resources citizens have in making sense of and engaging with the political process in the United States of America.
Tools:
  • Figma
  • Google Forms
  • Adobe XD
  • Whimsical
Role:
  • UX/UI Designer
  • UX Researcher
  • Project Manager
Deliverables:
  • Branding Work
  • Competitive Analysis
  • User Flows
  • User Personas
  • User Research
  • User Survey
  • User Stories
  • Remix Boards
  • Wireframes
  • High Fidelity Prototype

Problems

  • Users want to be able to vote alongside their representatives to influence legislation
  • Users want to be able to track how their representatives align with them on the issues
  • Users want to be more efficient in how they collect and act on information as it regards to politics.

Solution

  • Create a resource that strikes a balance between all levels of government; federal, state and local
  • Allow users to vote directly on past, present and pending legislation
  • Track how users align with representatives based on voting habits
  • Make all of this information that usually lives in a few hundred different websites intuitively navigable within one single app

Discovery

During the Discovery phase it became readily apparent that users were frustrated with a lack of functional resources that allowed them to engage with politics outside of just looking up information from campaigns on voting issues. They wanted more impact, more contact and increased political accountability.

User Survey

Users shared strongly that their interest in politics was more than just at the federal level or primarily in one branch of government, and that they wanted to directly influence and track the political process.
User Survey Data
Federal Government Impact
State Government Impact
Local Government Impact

Key Takeaways

  • 100% of participants believed representatives should be held accountable
  • 72% of participants strongly agreed that citizens need more ability to impact the decisions of their representatives
  • 88% of participants shared that the national level politics had a large to moderate impact on every day life
  • 97% of participants shared that state level politics had a large to moderate impact on everyday life
  • 92% of participants shared that local level politics had a large to moderate impact on everyday life.

User Interviews

User interviews further confirmed that participants of all political knowledge and engagement levels were frustrated with the political process and were not aware of how their representatives voted on issues they cared about.

User Personas

The user surveys and interviews indicated that despite political affiliation, level of engagement and political knowledge users were disappointed in their lack of options that would enable them to engage with the political process across all levels of government.
Alexandria Talvez
Education Consultant | Chicago, IL
“How are people supposed to keep politicians accountable if we don’t even know what they’re doing?”
Goals
Find a better way to discover and understand how representatives vote
Spend less time engaging with social media to stay connected
Be more educated on local issues
Frustrations
I don’t think my political party actually represents me
Lack of transparency in political process
Time spent on educating self about representatives with poor or biased results
Stephan Blankenship
Retired Welder | Fort Worth, TX
“They’re all crooks, every single one of them! So much is happening all the time even as a retiree, I can’t keep track.”
Goals
See how my representatives are voting on issues I care about
Be informed and able to know the truth about what is going on in the government
Know more about state and local politics
Frustrations
Neither party seems to listen to their constituents
How can I trust websites that tell me what to believe about politicians?
The information for voting records and tracking legislation is so very to navigate
Hannah Huntswell
HR Manager & Mother | Decatur, Ga
“I work remotely and watch my two children. There has to be a more efficient way to be involved in politics”
Goals
See what decisions representatives at every level make that impact her daily life
Understand if politicians from different parties represent her values more without a biased media filter
Rely less on traditional and social media outlets for information regarding how she should vote
Frustrations
There seems to be more opinion that fact available
It takes forever to sort through all of the available information on any subject, and I don't have that time
I register as a particular party to vote, but I don't think they represent me well at all.

Competitive Analysis

When conducting the competitive analysis I was shocked to find that funded applications were poorly designed and did not follow any cohesive design system, and lacked basic accessibility. Vote Spotter provided the most similar functionality to what I would be designing, but was still not robust enough to offer users more than a space to just vote on national legislation or recent news.

Countable

Strengths

  • Great logo
  • Simple onboarding
  • Engages users on policy by offering a scenario or summary followed by a scale you can vote on
  • Social aspect/ interactivity can share reasoning for voting, upvote, follow & share comments
  • Frames complex legislation with simple FOR & AGAINST summaries of political stances

Weaknesses

  • Doesn’t categorize representative votes, so it is a long scrolling list of multiple pages with no order
  • Ads are everywhere, which may impact perceived bias
  • Poses legislative summaries in too biased of a format
  • Two menu icons // poor UI placement & does not pass contrast checks

Opportunities

  • Could highlight issues that “hot topics” or coming up in a legislative session better
  • There is a big push in market for increased political oversight and accountability driven by users
  • Could be applicable to all levels of government not just congress increasing appeal to users

Threats

  • More and more amount of competing apps in the political sphere 
  • Lack of focus on accountability and action for application
  • Poor information hierarchy and UX design within the application makes primary tasks difficult
Issue Vote Display
Representative Menu

Votespotter

Strengths

  • Easy onboarding based on zipcode
  • Clear focus on purpose of application
  • Clear contrast between representative voting habits
  • Provides ability for you to contact representative directly
  • Displays bills that up for a vote

Weaknesses

  • Doesn't organize or categorize massive amount of bills aside from recency
  • You only have access to recent bills that you can cycle through and take action on
  • It doesn't feel like there is a driving force for user actions within the application

Opportunities

  • Could expand into a cleaner UX design and make sure it is following best practices to improve user experience
  • Further development could increase implementation to all levels & branches of government
  • Categorizing votes and bills for use would make it more appealing for users

Threats

  • If Votespotter doesn’t level up alongside or in spite of competition it will be eclipsed by more engaging applications

Define

While I gathered data that supported the hypothesis of the application, I also found myself of having to imagine how to develop an application that would allow users to gather information about representatives, elections and legislation across all levels of government & elected branches.

Sketches

While the scope of the work seemed large & complex due to the very nature of the political system within the US, through a few rounds of sketching I was able to approximate the foundation of the application into a workable, straightforward and intuitive format.
Landing Page
Representative Category
Legislative Category
Representative Page

Wireframes

In my initial pass at wireframes you can see how the remix boards & sketches informed a government document style format with minimal aesthetic flourishes in favor of uniform information presentation & an unbiased delivery.
Legislative Category
Individual Legislation
Representative Category
Representative Page

Branding

Branding helped further outline the feel and aesthetic of POLITICOS. It is critically important that a resource that is meant to be a trustworthy space for actionable information that users view it as unbiased & not aligned with any particular cause or political movement.
Full User Personas
A sheet presented with rules for logo
Logo Theming
A sheet detailing primary navigation images
Navigation Theming
A sheet detailing use of color images
Typography Color Theming

Development

In the development phase, I took the space to consult further with other UX designers, and participants from the user research to follow up on the design's development prior to launching usability tests.
Representative Category
Legislative Category
Individual Legislation
Voting & Alignment

Prototyping

The prototype I built was designed to empower the user through a streamlined and uniform experience that lends itself well to interconnected information navigation
  • A dynamic bottom navigation bar that allows a user to between; representatives, legislation, elections and political updates
  • All categories of navigation are also complimented by a government level tab for ease of user navigation
  • Legislation can be filtered by recency, branch of government, and current legislative status
  • Legislation can also be viewed based on category making it easier for a user to get to the topics they want to vote on in the application
  • Representative pages features direct contact capabilities as well as a user's & constituents' voting alignment
Prototype

Delivery

Usability testing confirmed that an integrative approach to a political accountability application wasn't just a good idea, but that its implementation is integral for further empowerment of users as informed citizens able to utilize direct and unbiased information in their civic decision making processes.

Usability Testing

I conducted 9 usability tests with pre- and post- test surveys and screen captures of recordings for the seven tasks that were completed by participants
  • 100% of participants rated the ease of navigation as easy (78%) to very easy
  • 100% of participants rated their satisfaction with features as satisfied (44%) to very satisfied
  • 89% of users shared that they would view this application as very helpful (55%) to helpful
  • 77% of users viewed this application as unbiased (44%) to very unbiased
Usability Testing Report

Outcomes

The outcomes of this project are many fold, not only is it possible to contain every level of government's legislation, representatives, elections and updates in on application, but you can do it effectively and intuitively.

Lessons

What came up time and time again with over 80 participants during the course of this project was just how unsatisfied users are with their options for navigating and acting on politics at every level. Generation X and Millenials are the most educated generations in the history of the United States of America; and they deserve more than electronic versions of political pamphlets that have existed for hundreds of years.

Users research and all aspects of it are a gift in product development, I cemented an understanding of how to make user research delightful for participants. By incorporating humor into the usability testing between the pre and post test surveys I was able to have participants engage with me on a more familiar level and share deeper insights on the project & its features.

Jonathan Canales

UX Designer

Did you come here looking for a UX designer that had a varied and dynamic work experience that could go from holding a space of deep empathy with users to working through a processes methodically, while also eagerly learning new skills to apply to future projects?

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Designed by Jonathan Canales