The Project
BallotBud was born out of the 2017 Debug Politics Los Angeles Hackathon. I partnered with a team of engineers and designers to create a Facebook-based chatbot that guides users through every step of the voting process. This includes voter registration, applying to vote by mail, reminders of upcoming deadlines, and candidate information.
Our prototype took first place at the weekend long hackathon, which led to our continuation of the project.
My Role
I performed surveys alongside our designer, and conducted in-depth interviews to validate the need and validity of the product. I used the initial surveys to identify participants for further in-depth interviews; these were eligible voters who expressed a strong desire to participate in the election process, but did not vote in the 2016 Presidential Election. I also helped perform the comparative analysis, which looked at other bots and apps that seek in increase voter participation or engagement. I determined the focuses and shortcomings of the bots and apps, in order to determine features that would distinguish our product.
After completing survey, interviews, and the comparative analysis, I reported back to the team with the multiple barriers to participation expressed during the interviews, and opportunities that have not been addressed by existing voting products. All of this helped scope our project to create a prototype for the Hackathon, and an MVP for rollout prior to California's 34th Congressional Election in May 2017.
Greeting from BallotBud after user initiates a conversation.
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Going Forward
As we are a small team, our roles often shift between design, research, and ideation. I am currently performing usability tests to discover successes of our current version, and identify user pain points and barriers to entry. I additionally work on promotion and methods to increase visibility and use of BallotBud. I recently created the user flow via Google Slides, which demonstrates the first phase to be fully built.
Lastly, I am continually trying to identify previously unknown pain points of the voting process for future consideration.
End goal user flow for Phase 1 of BallotBud.
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All team members have agreed BallotBud will remain nonprofit, nonpartisan, and open source.
