Student Project at General Assembly
(Hypothetical) Client:  The League of Women Voters

My Role: 

• Ideation

• Persona creation

• Interaction Design

• Prototyping

• Wireframing

PROJECT BRIEF

To better gauge the interests of their constituents and understand the impact of certain issues on their lives, the League wants a digital platform through which members can share their stories.

Solution

A mobile application which allows users to share their personal stories related to certain causes. 
This will help give them a voice and a community, and enable the League to better understand and connect with its constituents.

Features:

• Platform for sharing stories in video, audio or written format

• Educating users on causes championed by the League

• Allowing users to connect and help each other

Process

Research

Primary Research:

• Interviews:
  Female activists who talked about struggles faced fighting for their causes.

• Survey:
  To better gauge people’s awareness of the League. We learned that from those who know of the League, a large percent are under the impression that it caters exclusively to women.

Secondary Research:

• Comparative analysis:  
  Studied constituent interaction and social media presence of organizations like “Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund” and “Rock The Vote”.

• Examined the League's existing online presence:
  Unclear objectives and role,
  and decline in site visits in recent months- which is alarming considering that it is an election year.

Personas

Three main users:

1. The enthusiastic activist, wanting to make a difference in the world

2. The person directly affected by the issues being championed

3. Individual seeking information on the causes

User Journey Through App:

Inspiration from successful sharing platforms

Changes based on User Testing

• More Focus
  In our original idea, the app allowed for people to post about any issues they had. However, we decided to restrict story topics to the causes that were currently of interest to the League.

• Enabling Comments
  Users desired a means to comment, connect and help one another. We originally didn't include this feature to avoid cyber bullying.

• Enabling Sharing
  Users wanted to share posts with friends and family outside the app community. We realized that this would help generate more traction for the cause, and rally support from people not directly affected by the issue. This is based on the hypothesis that a person is more likely to get involved when an issue affects someone they know.

• Resolved Heuristic problems
  We discovered and resolved issues regarding “clickability”, “visibility” and functionality of design elements.

• The name of the App
  Since research showed that “League of Women Voters” was misleading, we chose to advise the client to call the app by the League’s slogan: “Making Democracy Work”.
  This is in line with the League’s agenda and is a very powerful phrase that makes a big impression.

Iterations

Future Possibilities

THE TEAM

Batool Husain
Alice Fu
Leoul Samson
Raymond Hsia