Politibib is a free dedicated mobile app geared toward providing Arizona state residents with policies and legislative information that affects their communities and neighborhoods. The app also includes information on local government, volunteering and registering to vote.

The Problem

Uninformed voting has been a prevalent factor of the American political system for decades. This stems from a general perception of lacking easy access to legislative information, which our team saw as an opportunity.

The Goal

Design an app that will help inform users of existing policies that directly affect their communities, in order to help people understand the legislation that they vote on.

My Role

UX Designer leading the interface design of Politibib’s Dedicated Mobile App and responsive website.

My Responsibilities

Conducting UX Research, Constructing Paper Wireframes, Planning and Executing Usability Studies, Producing Digital Wireframes and Lo-Fi Prototypes, Developing Hi-Fi Prototypes

Project Duration

October – November 2021

Omar is a High School student who is looking to start a career in politics after they graduate. They are engaged in their Government Class at school and try to constantly stay up to date on local government actions that affect their community. Omar lives miles from the nearest library and does not have consistent means of transportation to get there to study local laws and proposals as primary sources on the library’s desktop computers. Additionally, they sometimes face challenges when working with primary source docs online. For example, they are not able to annotate docs to use for academic papers since they cannot take the files home.

Raquel lives in Phoenix, Arizona and is married with 2 children. They are a 1st-Gen Immigrant who originally is from Monterrey, Mexico and moved to the United States for college. Raquel lives a busy life as both a full-time Graphic Designer and mother. They want to build and provide the best life that they can for their kids, and tries their best to stay updated on local government actions. While they constantly follow news articles from media sites on their phone to stay informed Raquel finds following politics to be a very time-consuming task. If there were more free time, Raquel would seek out primary sources to learn more about local policies–or at least–unbiased summaries. Lastly, Raquel sometimes struggles with understanding certain words in English, and finds bills to be a challenge to read in a language that is not her first.

An audit of a few competitor offerings provided insights on gaps, including comprehensive search features and accessible annotation tools. The goal was to identify sites that provide unbiased, primary source information on political bills and propositions and how they structure the information.

Focusing on the search and annotation feature gaps identified during the competitive audit, we conducted a quick crazy-eights session to come up with possible solutions for users.

Navigation

Users were able to complete the initial user flow, but some had difficulty navigating back to the home screen.

Toolkit

Users pointed out that they found the key features useful, but difficult to utilize.

Gestures

Users want gestures for certain tools within the toolkit, such as the highlighter. 

Finding

Users appreciated the comprehensive options of the search feature, but wished it was organized differently. 

Following the usability study, adjustments were made to make navigation easier, incorporating mobile gestures. Additionally, efforts were made to improve the functionality of the toolkit at the bottom of Article screens. This included for example, making items searched within the page highlighted when input.

In addition to nav and the toolkit, the search option was revisited based on the usability study to better serve the user base. The search page throughout was given larger buttons and text to accommodate smaller screen sizes, and sections were broken up by type, time and geographic impact, respectively.

Color Contrast

High-contrast colors allow for a visual hierarchy to help differentiate elements, while also following WCAG AAA guidelines.

Multi-Lingual

Multi-language options are included to help users who may speak English as a second language access content throughout the interface.

Icons

Universal iconography is used to help users understand key features and tools, in addition to navigation.

Following the mobile app designs, we moved on to the responsive website map. The sitemap influenced the organizational structure of each screen’s design and highlighted where key annotation features will be available to use.

Using modulated elements, Mobile, Tablet and Desktop screens were addressed when designing layouts across platforms when designing the responsive site.

Impact

Users who were participants for usability studies had a positive reaction to the idea of an app or site that could make finding legislative information quicker and easier. Furthermore, most participants found the app easy to use, and appreciated the search feature for effectively finding content.

What was learned

We learned that there is still some work to do, in order to create more effective prototypes to test so that usability studies can be more effective and not hampered by a limited understanding of prototyping programs. Additionally, learning to effectively resize elements for different screens takes practice.

1. Responsive Testing

Further usability studies would be conducted to test the user flow of the responsive website, following final refinements to the dedicated mobile app.