Increasing Young Voter Turnout: A UX Case Study
Why don’t millennials vote? Younger generations have historically had the lowest voter turnout rates in every election. According to the US Census Bureau, only 46.1% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in the 2016 election. What can be done to increase voter turnout among younger generations? Can a product be created to solve this problem?
The Team
I worked with a team of talented designers during the beginning stages of this project. We were responsible for our own research, which we brought together to get a more complete picture of the problem at hand, and collaborated on persona creation, empathy building, site structure, and preliminary wireframes. We dispersed after the first round of wireframing and were responsible for our own brand development, high fidelity visual design, prototyping, and usability testing.
Challenge Assumptions, Find Truth
I started answering these question by listing out my assumptions about voting habits of young voters. Assumptions included:
- Millennials don’t care about voting
2. The media is no longer a source of truth
3. Young people are too busy to vote on Election Day
I countered each of these assumptions with an anti-assumption:
- Millennials are passionate about voting,
- Some media outlets do report unbiased information
- Mail-in ballots allow voters to vote on their own schedule
I took these lists and created a survey, which each member of the team posted to their personal FaceBook page. The survey provided us with data on a responder’s age, registration status, voting habits, and motivations.
I then interviewed individuals from my Facebook network with more targeted questions. I also ‘took to the streets’ and interviewed young professionals at the train station. The interviews included questions aimed at finding root causes behind millennials’ frustrations about the voting experience, as well as motivations behind getting out to vote. These interviews helped me gather sufficient data to find truth hidden by assumptions and stereotypes. Jake and Brayden also conducted interviews to gather data. After our interviews, we put our responses into Realtime Board to sort out similar responses.
We discovered that most millennials feel it is their duty to vote. They do have a desire to be involved in elections in order to improve the future of the country, but feel frustrated with how difficult it is do the research required to be informed about every issue on their ballot.
These responses created the base for our user persona, Jessica.
The Millennial Voter
Jessica is a millennial voter from Salt Lake City. She is registered to vote and participated in the last presidential election but did not vote on every issue in the midterm elections. She spends an average amount of time on social media, which led her to want to be more involved.
Jessica never really cared about politics until the presidential election because that particular election made her feel unsure about the direction the country was moving in. She sees voting as a duty to her country and her future. She wants to be informed on important issues but finds it difficult to find the time to research everything on her ballot.
The main focus with the user persona was Jessica’s goals and frustrations. These came directly from the interviews with millennials during the research phase of the project. Jessica’s goals and frustrations helped us develop an empathy map to understand her experience better.
I used Jessica’s goals and frustrations, along with the empathy map, to develop a user story map. I started by looking at Jessica’s goals. At this point I also turned Jessica’s frustrations with not having time to research issues or stand in line to vote into a goal of streamlining the voting process. I wanted to eliminate these frustrations to better serve my user.
As a team, we determined the tasks needed in for minimum viable product and eliminated any tasks that were unnecessary to meet Jessica’s goals.
I recorded the entire user story map on Trello for my team to refer back to as we built out the product. Stickies on a wall are great, but recording them on Trello made it easier for me to reference my user’s story no matter where I was working.
I then mapped a user journey through the product to begin the transition from user journey to product flow. I determined pages necessary to accomplish tasks and started to figure out how my user would navigate through them. This exercise also highlighted user and product needs.
Start to Build
The user journey map provided the base for the structure of the product. It made it clear the product needed:
- Information specific to elections
- Research on candidates in the election
- Unbiased information about ballot issues
- Method for saving research and important topics
- Place to store decisions about issues or candidates on a user’s ballot
We developed a preliminary sitemap to validate the importance of the pages determined in the user journey map and solidify a navigation pattern.
Prototype & Test
It was time to turn the pages identified in the sitemap into wireframes. My team decided the homepage, profile page, and main article page were most important and should be designed collaboratively. These pages would set the tone and much of the informational architecture for the site. We approached wireframing as a team by iterating on our own for thirty minutes. Then we reviewed our iterations and identified the most successful components.
We turned these into a final wireframe for each view, divided up the remaining pages, and iterated these pages on our own.
I paused after we completed wireframes to pull the features outlined in the wireframes and record them on cards to conduct card sorts. I wanted to validate the work we had done so far before investing time into higher fidelity screens. The card sorts made it clear that the naming conventions of the site’s navigation needed to be rethought and the conversation starters were unnecessary and should be cut. It was good to discover this at this stage because it saved me from working on something the user didn’t need.
When the wireframes were complete, I pulled the team’s pages together into Sketch and uploaded to InVision to build a prototype for usability testing.
The test audience desired a more personalized site with clearer navigation. I took this feedback and edited the design by adjusting the information architecture, adding a way for users to identify their political identity, and increasing personalized content based on location and interests.
Establish the Visuals
I started the visual design by determining a color palette. Blue was an easy choice, as it conveys authority and trustworthiness. But what blue to use? I did some research and learned women prefer pastels and men prefer bright hues. I also discovered most competing products use dark blues, which appear outdated. This all led me to settle on a bright pastel. It’s trustworthy, appeals to both men and women, and feels young and fresh. I stayed monochromatic with lighter blues and grays to stay modern and streamlined. I also added pops of red to call attention to areas of interaction and give a strong sense of patriotism to the product.
I established a name, Know Your Vote, and designed a logo to accompany it.
I wanted the name of the site to reflect the confidence that could be gained using the product. This answered the concern of the user about having confidence while voting. The logo evokes a strong feeling of patriotism in its mirroring of the American flag. This answered the user’s desire to feel pride and patriotism throughout the voting process.
After establishing a color palette, name, and logo, I set to work filling in the blanks on the wireframes. Once I had a few pages mocked up, I imported them into InVision and built a high fidelity prototype. The first issue usability testers noticed was scale. The content was too large for the screen, which made it feel intended for an older generation. It also deterred users from scrolling down the page to view more because they couldn’t tell it was there.
I adjusted the relative scale of the content and put it in front of more users. These reviewers provided feedback on the navigation and hierarchy of content. They noticed a lack of distinction between the elements on each page. I took this feedback and made adjustments to the weight, size, and color of copy throughout the site. I also removed the carousel at the top of the home page, opting to show the hierarchy of that content through its prominence on the page instead of its order in the carousel.
The Final Result
So how do we get younger generations to vote? Give them everything necessary to feel confident throughout the voting process in a single location. This product provides millennial voters with everything required to be politically informed, get ready to vote, and review recent election results. The site provides customized content to increase users’ efficiency in learning about issues they are passionate about or that will appear on their specific ballot. Finally, the visual design of the product is trustworthy and millennial focused.
Will this product increase turnout among young voters? Let me know what you think by commenting below!
