Polite
How can we make politics more accessible to young voters?
Polite is a concept app made to connect people with their legal representatives on a local, state, and national level. The bulk of this project consisted of user research and testing. After getting a grasp on my target demographic and their pain points, the design came pretty seamlessly.
Problem:
Young people don’t know much about smaller government operations and are too self-conscious to ask others about it, and seeking help online often leads to a rabbit hole of biased or inaccurate information
Solution:
Polite, an app that lays out all of your local, state, and federal representatives in office, gives the basics on what they value, and ways you can contact them.
Young people don’t know much about smaller government operations and are too self-conscious to ask others about it, and seeking help online often leads to a rabbit hole of biased or inaccurate information
Solution:
Polite, an app that lays out all of your local, state, and federal representatives in office, gives the basics on what they value, and ways you can contact them.
User Research
How often do you check the news?
The findings show that only 13% of those who took the survey check the news more than 5 times a week on average.
Do you know who your State Senators are?
This was perhaps the most shocking result from the survey; a mere 10.53% of those screened knew who their senators are.If you were to check the news right now, how would you?
The findings were predictable in that over half of those surveyed would use a news app, validating my idea for creating an app.
I surveyed 40 people age 18- 24 asking simple questions about their knowledge of the political process and how they consume news to gauge their pain points and needs.
Over half of users prefered to check the news on a mobile application over any other method
After I was content with my user research, I began working on the architecture based on what I learned. I was slightly nervous at this point because it seemed like the app was going to end up being more complex than I intended, but I ended up being able to keep it relatively simple in its final build.
sketches
originally planned on the visuals to take on a fun and illustrative style to attract a younger demographic, but after talking to users I realized they were more interested in it being to the point and not distracting.
Personalized for the user
The polite signup process asks simple, nonintrusive questions to determine who the user’s representatives are & if they align with their beliefs.
Easy information
The home screen is a simple hub displaying all of the user's representatives, with links to that reps individual page, the calendar page, and profile page.
