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From climate change to civil rights, our world is shaped by the legislature and the representatives and officials we elect to create them. One of the most effective ways to have an impact on that legislature is to get involved with politics themselves. This process can be overwhelming and seem fruitless, but citizen involvement really does make a difference.

This project began with a combined interest in sustainability. As we began to conduct interviews and secondary research, a key insight developed: that in order to truly make an impact on sustainability, one should be involved in politics, but the politics surrounding many issues is polarized, confusing, and uninformative. From there, we began working on Politics of Living, researching major politics issues (Climate Change, Civil Rights, Business + Economy, Law & Punishment, Healthcare, and Education), the legislature surrounding them, & the ways to influence that legislation.

There is a focus on clear, simple to understand information, presented through text, photography, and infographics. By presenting facts in an engaging and straightforward way, we aimed to generate a deeper interest around highly present topics in politics and subsequently, encourage political activism and engagement.

Furthermore, the site supplied a matching system, which allows the user to select their interest and then choose from appropriate political activities and organizations from automatically generated results.

To view a clickthrough of the final website, click here

For the presentation purposes within an exhibition and potentially for an in-depth tabling kit, a poster and book of content were created as supplementary materials. In order to provide assets that were memorable and tangible, but still highly informative, we created a compilation of each section of the site in the format of a short book. The book created was an example of what one in the series may look like, geared towards Climate Change.

Handouts (that could be used as part of the pamphlets or separately) and engaging business cards that encouraged the user to engage with the information presented were created to be used as part of a tabling kit. Additionally there would be a social media presences as a way to engage with the audience and public, and continue to keep them educated and updated.

My Role & Responsibilities:
• Worked collaboratively on user research, interviewing, concept development and user testing
• Led the UX/UI of the website; wireframing, interface design, prototpying
• Created the interactive walkthrough to data visualizations, transitions and micro interactions
• Social media campaign design and content collection

Letting Research Guide Direction of Project: After our very insightful interviews, we changed the direction of the project and this allowed us to create a final deliverable that was more impactful that what we initially intended. It was important to allow our research and insights to guide the direction from the very beginning to the user testing and refinement of the pieces.

Being Flexible: This capstone project was worked on during the semester that COVID first hit. This caused for us to go virtual in the midst of it and change some plans as an in person show was no longer happening. We had to get creative on how we can still visually display our intended deliverables and be flexible to create solutions that would still convey the intended ideas..