Overview
Proj Name: Where’s The Policy Website Re-Design
Platform: Web and Mobile Browser
Key Performance Metric: Average Time on task
Methodology: User Interviews, Qualitative Research
Role: UX/UI, Creative Lead
I worked on a redesign of the search engine tool for Where’s The Policy? The search engine is intended to solve the friction many U.S. residences experience when they try to find information on who their elected officials are and how to contact them. While the information on each office is publicly available, the information is rarely consolidated, resulting in typically low correspondence between elected officials and their constituents.
Where's The Policy?
The Problem
Where's The Policy? needed to generate a simplified home screen that would encourage users to utilize the search database of elected officials in the U.S.
Research
Prior to designing any updates to the beta version I developed 3 user personas through user research. I worked with the CEO to generate surveys that would allow us to learn more about our users. We asked questions to see if they identify as a person who enjoys politics and at what frequency politics is a discussion topic in their day-to-day life.
After identifying patterns in the survey results we selected different participants for interviews. During the interviews, we would ask for more details regarding their experiences discovering and contacting their elected officials, along with elaborating on some of their responses from the survey. Through user surveys and interviews we were able to generate 3 different personas that would assist with generating the new design.
The User
The first user is someone who is frequently discussing politics and has contacted their representative at a medium- to high frequency about concerns in their community. They may or may not subscribe to a news source and will be frequently updated on politics on local, state, and federal levels.
The second persona is someone who is active in the community, potentially working or volunteering at a non-profit or community-based organization or attending local meetings. Their primary use of the site would be to use convince their community to use the tool to contact elected officials politics to sway their actions in favor of a cause. Similar to the first persona, they frequently contact their representatives regarding community-based topics but are trying to activate users who may or may not be engaging their elected officials.
The third type of user similar to the first is an individual who wants to contact their representative. While they have a reason to contact their elected officials they start very limited correspondence with their elected officials due to a lack of time or energy.
The broad range of user personas required that we prioritize a high level of usability, with a clear call to action that would allow users to easily navigate the site and search for elected officials’ data.
Design
With data from the user interviews in mind, I proceeded to sketch out a redesign of the website. We proceeded to sketch out ideas on how to arrange the information to make using the search tool more intuitive. Many users voiced that they didn't find many political websites engaging, and were typically organized with too many elements on one page. With this in mind, we created a wireframe that stripped away most of the elements that did not revolve around the search tool.
After working through two iterations of the site, we were able to create a page that looked very similar to a web search engine. Users would have a clear CTA that would prompt them to use the search tool and not be distracted by other elements on the page.
For the search results page, we would organize representatives' info into tabs, Local, State, and Federal, which would organize the results of users' representatives without showing representatives for all three levels of government at once. Each representative has buttons that provide information about how to contact each representative either through Twitter, Facebook, email, or phone.
These wireframes would later be used for user testing.
Results
Through user testing, we were able to generate wireframes that were simplistic and straightforward. Users were able to use the tool more easily and contact their elected officials in less than three clicks. Increasing conversion times for the website.
A big challenge of the project was the generation of user personas, since the prospective users included so many adults in the U.S., the personas would initially be very broad. But through conversations with stakeholders and through interview data we were able to generate personas we could use for testing. As my work with the organization continues I look forward to furthering the refinement of these personas as we learn more about the users.
