Background

Impact is an app prototype that was developed as a project for the Google UX certificate course. I was given the prompt to develop “an app to help young adults learn about local politics”.

The Problem

Young adults need an app that can help them learn about local politics and encourage them to participate in local elections. We will know we are successful when we see our users engaging with app content.

User Interviews

I started the process by doing some background research on the problem. I learned that, according to the National Civic League, the average voter turnout to local elections in the United States is only 15-27%, with citizens 65+ being seven times more likely to vote than those 18-34. This disparity leads to electorates that don't always accurately reflect their constituent demographics.
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Wanting to discover some of the the reasons for this, I interviewed 7 participants between the ages of 20-33 remotely via Zoom in order to learn how often they participate in local politics and what factors contributed to their participation.

After the interviews, I reviewed the recordings and made notes of key quotes from the participants and created empathy maps for each of them

I was surprised to learn that, out of all the participants, not a single one rated their participation rate higher than a "2" on a scale of 1-5. Generally, everyone claimed to care about local politics, but felt like the topic was too complicated to be worth investing time in

Personas

The empathy maps revealed a few patterns to me. I was able to group these together and develop two personas: Alex, a professional that's constantly on the move, and Sarah, a busy high school student

Competitive Audit

Now that I had a firm grasp on the problem I did an audit of existing products. Knowing my users and their needs informed the features I was looking for in the competition.

Ideation Exercises & Paper Wireframes

Having an idea of what worked and what didn't work for existing platforms, I was finally able to start coming up with initial sketches for the product

In the initial research phase, I had noticed that nearly all the participants expressed an interest in knowing how issues affected them or their communities  During one of the rapid ideation exercises, I explored this insight. I came up with the idea for a  section of the app that would list demographics and allow users to see which issues on their local ballot affected them based on user sourced content

Low Fidelity Prototypes

Now that the app's direction was starting to take shape, I started on the low fidelity prototype. I took the paper wireframes I'd done into Adobe XD and started building out the individual screens. For visual clarity, I populated some of the fields with sample information from a recent ballot

I added interaction and linked the screens together to make a functional prototype of the core features.
It was at this point that I came up with the title "Impact", in reference to how political issues can have a large impact on people's lives. I felt that it added a sense of gravity and importance to the concept of engaging in politics.

Testing

I ran a series of in person moderated usability tests with a new group of 5 participants and recorded my observations in a spreadsheet. From there, I recorded each response on a sticky note color coordinated to its participant, and categorized them in order to get a better look at the problems.

On the whole, feedback was positive. Participants seemed excited about the app which, although encouraging, made it difficult to find specific areas that could use improvement. Despite this I was able to identify a few issues that needed resolving

Key Insights

Got confused trying to find the expanded policy information

Couldn't tell that the cards were clickable

Commented that they expected the section labeled "groups" to be something different

Thought that the text was too small

Several participants were confused by the word "groups" on the bottom navigation bar. In the final version this was changed to "Impact groups". This aligned better with the theme of the word "Impact" referring to the effects an issue has on different groups, leading to a more consistent interpretation of the label.

Original

Most Recent

Users complained that the text was too small so I opted to use a larger font. Additionally, one user didn't understand that the cards were clickable so I added a small line at the top to clarify their function.

Original

Update

Most Recent

Users complained that the text was too small so I opted to use a larger font. Additionally, one user didn't understand that the cards were clickable so I added a small line at the top to clarify their function.

Original

Update

Most Recent

Users also commented that they liked the idea of breaking arguments into support/opposition, but that the design was hard to understand at a glance. For the final version I introduced colored edges on the posts to designate these positions.

Original

Most Recent

Style Guide

After updating the low fidelity prototype based on user feedback, I created a mockup of a single screen. Using this I put together a guide that would help in applying this visual style to the rest of the screens.

High Fidelity Prototype

Finally I was able to put it all together. I applied the styles and updates to all the screens to create the high-fidelity prototype.

With the development of a high fidelity prototype, Impact had met fulfilled the criteria for the Google UX certificate course. However, the project may still be improved.