Local Election Promotion
A class project to encourage and educate people on municipal elections
Overview
My Role
Independent researcher and designer
Tools/Skills
User research, literature reviews, ideation, and product testing, Figma
The Problem
Young voters are not showing up and having their voices heard at the local level. According to the Knight Foundation, voter turnout for presidential elections nears 60% while local elections are usually one third or less than that, especially for young voters under 30 years of age.
The Solution
My solution included two experiences, one envisioned to welcome Facebook users to their town/city's government and another to promote and educate them on any upcoming elections that may apply to them.
Problem Background
This project was completed as a final project for my Interaction Design 2 class. I remembered writing 100 postcards encouraging young voters to vote in the 2020 presidential election. However, I wasn’t fully knowledgeable about voting while doing so. As a young voter myself, I recognized that there may be issues surrounding other young voters and elections.
How can I encourage young people to learn about voting?
Research
Structured Interviews
I investigated how young people learned various topics related to voting through user interviews.
The goal was to better understand develop any further questions I could have for a more inclusive survey to send out to a larger audience.
Social Media Trend
Various platforms such as Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram were brought
up by interviewees.
Survey
I used a survey to gain insight into how young people gain information
about elections.
The survey was able to gain responses from 48 young Americans that changed the trajectory of my project from voters education to municipal election encouragement.
Local Election Inexperience
Out of 48 respondents, only 19 had voted in a local election before
Social Media Information
Social media ranked higher than other resources such as candidate websites and voting organizations on informational resources
Literature Review
I gauged the validity of my new idea by conducting some literature reviews.
The Knight Foundation outlined a few opportunities to explore. They found that young adults are leading in terms of digital use and that town welcome packets can inform them about local elected officials and upcoming local elections. This helped back up my confidence with transitioning to a focus on municipal elections.
Digital Generation
The younger generations would love a voting app that provides basic information about local candidates and issues
Welcome Packet
Millenials liked the idea of a welcome packet for new residents so they can be informed on who the local elected officials are and when local elections are held
Unrecognizable Leaders
Younger residents often don't recognize elected leaders in their community. They do recognize larger names who could potentially be visible as part of a voter registration or mobilization campaign
Structured Interviews with Poll Officers
I gained more insight from a recent municipal election to learn more about voter turnout.
I interviewed two poll officers who had years of experience working smaller and larger elections at the town of Middleboro, Massachusetts. The goal was to better understand how municipal elections were promoted and how that connected to voter turnout.
Facebook Promotion
The poll workers said that Facebook was the main source of promoting the election and was more helpful than the town website
Unawareness
Residents may know when an election is happening but not where or what's being voted on
Age Gap
Most people that attended the local election were over 50 years of age
Low Voter Turnout
3.6% of registered voters showed up to the local Middleboro election compared to 70% in the 2020 Presidential election
Research Takeaways
Social Media
Social media plays a huge role in promoting all elections
Advertising
Voters are more inclined to participate in voting if it is being properly advertised to them
Lack of Knowledge
Town and city residents, especially younger voters, are not engaging with their local government because of their lack of knowledge about them
New Problem Statement
How can I encourage young voters to get involved in their local elections?
Design Opportunity
"Social media plays a huge role in promoting elections"
Taking advantage of the huge role that social media plays in the lives of people today, especially younger people, is a huge indication of how to move forward.
"Voters are more inclined to participate
in voting if it is being properly advertised
to them"
The best way to encourage young voters to vote in municipal elections is by providing them with as much advertisment and promotion as Presidential elections
"Town and city residents, especially younger voters, are not engaging with their local government because of the lack of information being provided to them"
Voters need to be provided with ample amounts of information on upcoming elections in order to feel inclined to vote. Most will not seek out updates on local elections
I considered designing a social media app for elections but reasoned that it would be hard to maintain continual use and keep users engaged. This left me with the option to redesign a part of an existing social media app...
The Solution
Utilize Facebook to encourage
young voters to get involved in municipal elections
Why
An opportunity already exists
Facebook has a Voting Information Center that provides users with various types of information related to elections, mainly the presidential.
Feedback
Do young people still use Facebook?
My professor brought up the idea that the utilization of Facebook is trending downwards, especially for younger users. After doing further research, I found this to not be true. Research shows that 70% of those ages 18 to 29 use Facebook in 2021
Concerns of misinformation
Facebook has worked through various avenues to combat misinformation. They also provide CTA's on many sections of the app related to politics that outsource users to find official information.
Relevant voter information
How do we provide users information on the location that they're registered to vote? This one was quite tricky but also led me back to Facebook. While interviewing young voters, I discovered a trend that many were not comfortable with having location services on for their social media accounts. Facebook is the one platform where many users include their hometown. While this does not always point to a user's location of voting, it is more accurate for younger people who don't turn on location services and move around a lot.
Mid-Fi
Evaluation
Evaluation Methods
During the end stages of this project I conducted five remote, unmoderated usability testing sessions on young voters.
Feedback
The wireframes weren't clear on how local government works
The entire point of the project was to inform users on how their local government operated and who their local elected officials are
There was too much text on
the initial pop up
The users felt as though there was too much text in the pop up CTA that encouraged them to view their hometown's Welcome Packet. The labor involved with reading too much text was enough to draw their attention away
It may not be feasible for every incumbent member in a local government to have their own official Facebook page
Even in smaller governments there are likely still many members who serve. The struggle to continuously keep their pages updated can lead to outdated and incorrect information which is the opposite of what this project is trying to accomplish
Final Screens
Lessons Learned
Design systems are key to a
successful project
I was still able to utilize some online Facebook assets as well as screenshots from my own Facebook account. This made a huge impact on the work I was able to do, especially with the time constraint I had with this school project.
Preliminary research helps inform
later research
I was able to use some of the findings I had from my first interview with young voters to structure my survey sent out to a larger audience. The responses I
got from the interviews led to a lot
of knowledge that I wasn't aware of
that shaped the framing of my
survey questions.
Project feasibility is a huge consideration
There were many avenues that I could've taken this project but I ended up
going with the most feasible one. Even while planning the specific idea that I
had I ended up having to change around some things to consider page upkeep
with local elected officials.
What I Would Do Differently
Sources of Information
While the Welcome Packet and Dashboard information would ideally be approved by the town clerk or mayor, I would like to know if something like this is too much to manage, especially for larger cities like Boston. It is ideal that a page be approved by the official town/city government but there are concerns with internal politics occuring.
Look at the original problem
There's still a disconnect between young voters and general election information. Of course, one challenge with that is finding a new app idea that is different from the ones that already exist but aren't being utilized. It would be insightful to look into why that is and how that can be changed.