Pivote

Overview

Sparked by the Arab Spring, there has been a change of power dynamics between the state and its citizens in various countries across the world. With millennials growing ever so conscious of the social implications of their actions, this project aims to study the future of democracy and how do young adults interact with choosing their leaders.

Mission
To identify factors that influence lower voter turnouts and to increase voter participation

Duration
10 weeks

Role
Design Strategist

User Problem

There is a steady decline in voter turnout
among millennials across the world. They feel excluded from democracy because of the formal nature of the political system and the political language alienates them

Research

The two major research spaces was politics and young adults. To focus the scope of the project, I identified Chennai, India as the case study subject. The major themes of the research was plotted under the 2 spaces. This space helped build the research matrix which was the crux of the primary research

Research Techniques
Popular Media Scan
Publications Research
Research Matrix
Interest Group Discussion
Surveys
User Interviews

Data Analysis

User Group Definition
Based on secondary and primary research, users can be defined into 4 types. Ranging on the two factors - Engagement and Awareness. The users are classified as Informed and Engaged, Informed and Unengaged, Uninformed and Engaged and, Uninformed and Unengaged.

Situational Graph
Based on the 4 types of users, I plotted a situational graph following the actions of the different user groups in the 4 phases around the voting scenario.

Voting occurs in 4 phases
1. Acquiring information
2. Evaluation
3. Casting the vote
4. Follow-through

To narrow the scope of the project the informed and unengaged user was chosen as the hero of the project. This user group often includes thought leaders and other popular members of the society who influence their peers. They are aware and can make critical decisions but do not follow through on the act of casting a vote.

Users don't understand political language or systems

Users feel alienated because they do not understand political language thereby creating an entry barrier even among interested users.

Social media speaks to my soul

There is an increased distrust for mainstream news media as each organization seems to be pushing their own agenda and so there is a sway towards information spread through social media as users trust their peers and community.

Democracy and politics needs upgrade

The agencies of interaction with the current political system are outdated and require users to be familiar with bureaucratic processes. In an increasingly user-centered design world, democracy gets left behind.

Co - Creation Session

Participants were primed with secondary and primary research around the project. Followed by a short presentation we played a game called ‘Constraints and Clues’. Each participants picked one out of five constraints (Constraints being social, technological, environmental, economical, political and legal)  and quick-sketched a solution for it. The deck of clues had existing solutions from different industries.

The idea was to get participants from different backgrounds and expertise to innovate successful ideas from different fields to this problem.

Solution

Voter Kit
One of the ideas that surfaced from the co-creation session was a voter kit for the first time voter. The key concept was to provide a incentive to initiate the voting process and to include a timeline with the kit to make the potential voter to actually committing to casting the vote.

Final Concept
The elements of the voter kit that I wanted to capture was the experience of being involved in the voting process and to get the user to commit to casting a vote. In light of defining this goal, I designed a social experience that engages the user until they cast a vote.

A time sensitive sticker that changes colour on the days leading upto the day of election to act as a countdown timer. In the time leading to elections, users can scan the sticker to get updated information about candidates and other political news. To get the user to commit it to casting a vote, they can scan the sticker on the day of election at the booth to get a ‘socially conscious verified profile’.

Storyboarding of Final Concept

Implementation Plan

This concept works in multiple phases. The different phases helps focus the experience to potential voters with different engagement levels.

Recommendation

A key area recognized is the absence of the neutral platform that allows for voters to connect and interact with candidates. Leveraging this white space would be the next step in engaging and making a country into a participatory democracy. Only a 100% voter turnout can be truly called a democracy and this project aimed to tackle that. But for the next step, it would be assigning more responsibility to voters and so they can help create the manifestos based on their needs and wants.