Benedict Blyth

Key Insights and Opportunities

Research data was gathered, analysed and mapped using affinity maps, empathy maps and experience maps. Key Insights included:
- Many young people feel uninformed about politics and this contributes to an under-confidence and avoidance of engaging or talking about it.
- Young people do have issues they care about but feel unheard in politics and doubt they can influence real change.
- Young people are disappointed by the experience of voting that feels anti-climactic and unrewarding.
- Practical barriers and friction exist with young people perceiving registration and voting as unfamiliar, complex and inconvenient.
The UX vision statement articulated the opportunity:
There’s an opportunity for a product for politically disengaged young people who want to have agency on the political issues they care about but are unmotivated by anti-climactic voting experiences and feel like their lack of political knowledge invalidates them from participating.

Designing and Prototyping: The Experience

Key insights were used to generate multiple How Might We Statements; turning problems into opportunities. Design solutions were ideated through rapid individual and co-design sessions.
Concepts were developed and tested by experience prototyping them with participants. The experience was refined and iterated through role play.
The final experience was tested and validated in the creation of a low fidelity video prototype (see photo), depicting the full story of the user journey.

Designing and Prototyping: The Product

With a developed experience and user journey map established, site maps and user flows were created and iterated. Low fidelity paper wireframes (see photo) were created and tested with participants. To expand upon the content and functionality a low fidelity digital prototype was created and tested with seven participants.
Upon designing the high fidelity version, a visual identity was established, rooting the aesthetic decisions such as colour and typography in psychology and linking them to the experience design principles. A design system was created to speed up app design and allow easy iterative changes.
Throughout app design, usability heuristics and accessibility guidelines were referenced and followed.

Final Concept and Features

Heard is an app that allows young people to answer polls on issues they are passionate about. Results are aggregated and proactively sent to politicians and organisations relevant to the issue. The user feels like their views are being heard and those in power have regular statistical information regarding what young people value. Features include:
- Share your views in Polls, updated daily.
- Learn where others stand in Poll Results.
- Be heard; results sent to politicians and organisations.
- Follow the reactions and impact of Polls.
- Get informed with simple, balanced explainers for each issue.