Case Study

Why we’re doing this topic:

• Politics are taboo
• We felt that since people can’t vote until they’re 18, they start learning about politics later, and consequently know less about the process.
• Since younger people will be the ones impacted by political changes, we want to help them participate to have a say in their own futures

Territory Map:

• We wanted to define our problem space and figure out all the components we are dealing with when talking about voting.

Stakeholder Map:

• We wanted to map out all the people who are involved in the voting process

Research:

Card Sorting:

• We wanted to first see how much people knew about the voting process, just to confirm that this was a problem that needed to be solved. We learned that people have common misconceptions about registering, things on the ballot, valid ID & etc.
• We learned that it’s especially confusing for 1st time college voters away from home because voting regulations vary by state. Information online is often confusing and time consuming to digest, so we wanted our service to simplify the whole process.

Public Discussion Wall Space Prototype:

• We wanted to have a space where people can write reasons for supporting each candidate. We wanted to know if people knew any of their policies, and if they’re willing to talk about their opinions if it’s anonymous. We also wanted to find out why people will or will not vote.

Interviews:

• We wanted to figure out what motivated people to vote, and if they don’t plan on voting, we wanted to find out why.
• This occurred right before the registration deadline, so one way we started conversations with people is by helping them register. We passed out registration forms and guided them on filling it out, while answering any questions they had.
• We discovered that people voted usually because they felt it was their civic duty, they had strong opinions on candidates, or wanted to make an impact.
• We also found that people didn’t vote because they didn’t feel knowledgeable enough, they didn’t think their vote would make an impact, or they did want to vote but were too confused about the process.

Opportunities:

• 1st time voters need guidance with the voting process
• People are not familiar with all the issues being voted on
• People are less engaged in the political process outside of election seasons

Concept Development:

Brainstorming:

• We started mapping out possible service ideas, focusing on helping people participate in politics.

Experience Map:

• We thought through the user journey up until voting day, but quickly realized that we needed to think about the bigger picture in order for us to create an actual service.

Service Proposition:

• We went back and forth on what exactly our service should provide, and were trying to find a balance between being an information provider and a multi-touch point service.

Service Blue Print:

• From there on we created a service blue print that fleshed out how our service would help our customers through the voting process, and also how to continue their political engagement past voting day to have a greater societal impact.

Card Sort:

• We conducted another card sorting activity, this time asking people what positions are up for election, and out of the 6 people we asked, all of them knew that the president was up for election but nobody knew all of the other positions, including Judiciary, Congressional seats, etc. When our participants found out how little they knew, they asked us a lot of questions about the details of how to find out more about these other candidates, and also complained about how the media only focuses on specific races. We realized that a similar activity would be a great touch point for our service in getting 1st time users interested in getting involved with politics for the 1st time.

Prototype:

• We originally thought that by giving people scenarios of what their personalized future would look like with each candidate, they’d be more motivated to vote. We prototyped our 1st touch point idea by making the screens of this touch point, and discovered that this made the service seem biased, the futures are all subjective, and people wanted to see the impact of each candidate on not just themselves but also on their friends and families.

Final Deliverables:

App:

• This is our webapp & the 1st touch point quiz

Experience Map:

• We mapped out the experience of a customer using our service during election season.

Service Blue Print:

• We went through our service step by step, from the 1st community event touch point, to our webapp helping our customer through the voting process, to our webapp helping customers take action in issue-based organizations to facilitate long term political engagement.

Business model canvas:

• Our main revenue stream is selling voter data, similar to how Facebook sells personal data to other companies. We get exposure through community engagement, social media, and word of mouth.

Value Flow Diagram:

• This visualizes the relationship between the stakeholders, our service providers, and our service medium.