OVERVIEW
Roles and Deliverables
This was a solo project which means I was a UX Researcher, Interaction Designer, Product Designer, and Brand designer. I was in charge of conducting research, building a brand, and creating this app for this client. This Website was not considered complete until the following was completed:
- User surveys
- Interviews
- 2 proto-personas
- 5 User flows
- Site map
- Initial sketches
- Wireframes
- Style Tile
- Usability tests
- Mid-fi Prototype
Problem
This is a passion project of mine and something that I will be continually working on. The problem I was trying to solve was: I want to vote for politicians based on their actions and not on their party. This simple concept got me started on a path to designing a website that keeps track of bills being voted on in congress and how the vote turns out.
Audience
The target audience was determined through surveys and interviews. I was able to do get a wide variety of participants over a few days and start building my research to create my target audience. The demographics I chose were two types of users: those who follow politics more than most maybe a history and government teacher, and those who do not pay much attention to the government but still think it needs to change.
Solution
I decided to create a website that tracks candidates and bills so people can see what each politician says they stand for and how they actually vote, to put policy over party.
Process
Discovery and Research
This process needed multiple steps to gain all the information needed to create a successful site that fulfills users’ needs. I started with a competitive analysis, then user surveys, and then went on to user interviews which inspired two personas that concluded my initial research phase.
Competitive Analysis
For this project, I knew that government websites focus on UX to make all the information they have as readable as possible. So, instead of focusing on how to provide such information a better way, I focused on selecting the information I wanted to show and have links to the rest. This allowed me to, both, use this website as a reference and to set up an API from that site to get live updates with more efficiency. Overall the difference would be a different target audience. The audience that the government site is trying to reach would be people who look at this information for a living, but what I wanted to focus on were users who did not have that time to put into this information. My goal was clear, find the most important information and display it in a way that my target audience would easily receive it.
User Surveys
Beginning with user surveys, I sent one out to a few of the networks I have to gain some insight into some frustrations that people have with government and politics just to see if this product was needed and helpful. I found that everybody in the survey was had some distrust with how the government was run and wanted a way to see what they were doing in plain English.
User Interviews
User interviews gave a deeper dive into the reason why some of the answers were given. This provided key insights into how to create this website and what to focus on.
Personas
I created two personas for this process. I needed to round out my target audience and to do this I created these personas to research a little bit more and to make sure I had considered as many perspectives as possible.
Persona 1 - Emily
BIO
Emily got into politics after the 2016 presidential election where she saw the election process as unfair and wanted to change it. She quickly found that federal politics is near impossible to change at her level so she wants to change local politics first and go from there.
Goals
- Make some headway into the corruption of government, local or federal
- cause changes that allow people like her to have more of a say
- Be able to meet with local politicians to enact the change she wants to see
- Keep up to date on what politicians are doing to be able to get more transparency about the candidates she votes for and against
Drive
Emily is motivated by the realization that there is too much corruption in politics. With such a stressful presidency that has taken place, it has made a lot of people learn about how government works. Emily is no exception, she has started to tirelessly work as an activist to bring about change starting at the local events in the city of Atlanta.
Pain Points
- Deals with countless blockers made by people who do not want to see her succeed
- Knows the ins and outs of how local politics works but still has to jump through hoops to do what she wants
- fears growing tired and unmotivated by lack of change
Persona 2 - Blake
BIO
As a full-time history and government teacher Blake loves government and teaching people about how it works. He wants to always keep up to date and feels it is important to his job. He loves is students and has always known he wanted to teach. He does not care where you are on the political spectrum, he just wants everybody to at least pay attention to what it happening and maybe get involved if they feel compelled.
Goals
- Get students interested in government
- Teach students enough to prepare them for voting
- Get students to the point where they feel comfortable about how the US government works
Drive
Blake works full time as a history and US government teacher at Franklin High. He loves his students and wants to make sure they are fully prepared for voting when they turn 18. A lot of his students are not all that motivated to learn about politics and the day to day actions of the US government. With getting his students prepared, Blake also wants to generate interest within his students about government in general by giving them up to date and accurate up dates on what is happening in DC.
Pain Points
- Students seem uninterested and do not see the point in learning how the government works
- With a full-time job, it is difficult to stay up to date with everything that happens in government
- Is discouraged whenever there is no enough transparency in candidates
User Flows and Sketches
After creating personas, I created user flows to create paths through the website to solve these problems. This was the first concrete step in screen prioritization and will lead to a site map, and sketches.
Once I created the user flows I began to sketch out my ideas, I created these sketches to be able to quickly get my ideas out and identify any pain-points and correct them before moving them to digital.
Site Map
Style Tile
To create a brand for this website I created a style tile for branding guidelines. This would lead to the beginning of the design system being used on this site.
Wireframes
Finally, I started the digital wireframes, This eventually lead to a prototype.
PROTOTYPE
Interactive Prototype
After this I added the branding material I had created, I was able to create the prototype and start usability testing.
I had gained great insight from the usability tests. Many users stated that there was too much information on the landing page, the colors did not feel right, and that it was confusing to get around at first.
With this insight, I was able to get a better understanding of what I needed to work on. UX is never a finished job so I will continue to iterate and work on this project to make it more intuitive. Below are some screenshots of the latest iterations as well as a way to try it yourself!
TRY PROTOTYPEOUTCOME
Next Steps
I plan on taking more steps, the most needed one is more research through another round of user testing and then more focus on interaction design. I plan on bringing this site live on my own so the last steps in this phase would be development. I have a few ideas for updates as well including:
- Lobbyist tracking
- Local government database
- Other voting records (president, vice president, etc.)
Final Thoughts
Through this process, I learned a lot about creating a product from scratch and dealing with critiques on a passion project. Along with creating an intuitive website that deals with government websites with so much information. It was difficult to figure out how to prioritize specific information and put everything together in a way that users understand. I learned that users are more willing to click more than scroll which was an adaption that made me add more screens than I originally had.
Next: NOstop
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