Activision
A UX Case Study
Enabling grassroots activisim and community building
from the palm of your hands!
THE CHALLENGE
Can we implement a social engagement model to enable citizens to connect with civic representative to improve services and amenities that run their cities ?
Where - Coursework Project at IUPUI
My role - Research Ideation Prototyping Design
Timeline - 1 month
Tools - Figma, MIRO
Sneak peak at the final design solution
Meet the Team
Meet The Team
Anurag Harishchandrakar
Hemit Shah
Gauri Vedak
Salonee Nadkarni
THE PROCESS
Research
Preliminary Research
Qualitative Research
Market Research
Define
Empathy Map
Personas
User Journey
Problem Definition
Ideate
Explore Solutions
Story Boarding
Task flow
Information Architecture
Design
Paper Prototype
UX Design
Wireframes
Visual Design
THE RESEARCH
Preliminary Research - Analysing the competition - Change.org
The area of social activism is kind of a niche. So investigating any existing solutions is a prudent approach. In terms of competing software products. The closest possible product in this category is change.org
Change.org’s Business Model
The business model is designed to promote petitions to influence decision makers at the highest possible form of government. Change.org however, works on an extremely specific business model. At face value, this may give the appearance of being a non profit platform but is not the case.
The initial goal of the platform was to connect people with public interest initiatives and activism programs which resonated with them and allowed them to donate to the actual non profit organizations which did the groundwork towards solving those issues through petitions
How does their petition process work ?
The way change.org works is that you as an individual can submit a petition
-
free of cost
-
for zero platform membership fees
Once your petition is reviewed and is deemed worthy by their standards, campaign managers who work for Change.org specializing in marketing and public relations would reach out to you to provide tips and guidance on how your petition can gain traction and momentum in the public sphere.
Where does change.org
succeed?
Easy and assisted process to create a petition
Creating a petition is FREE
Strong outreach and marketing of validated petitions
Citizen
discourse and debate
Change.org bypasses this step by directly allowing users to post their petitions
No Physical or
Virtual Engagement
Users cannot engage and connect via virtual meeting or town halls to discuss and plan their petitions
Improvement and awareness of local governance
Our research indicated citizens lacked general awareness of public services and the organizations that deliver these services.
What do change.org
users miss out on?
Our biggest grip with the platform
Absence of grassroots activism
People in the state of indiana can create a petition concering an issue they have with existing state legislation and anyone from another part of the world can sign that petition
Qualitative Research (Interviews)
For a sensitive subject matter such as this, talking to potential users was quintessential but choosing the right user is just as important.
We decided to interview citizens, here in the city of Indianapolis who have lived here for at least 3-4 years. Due to the nature of the pandemic at the time of research, all interviews were conducted via phone/zoom
Key Discoveries from
Qualitative Research
People experience problems due to laws which define how civic services and amenities are executed
Empathy Map
What does the user
SAY
What does the user
SAY
I’m not entirely sure about public activism
What does the user
THINK
What does the user
THINK
I’m not really big on politics,
I’m indifferent to the whole thing
What does the user
DOES
What does the user
DOES
Societal issues are
discussedamong friends
What does the user
FEEL
What does the user
FEEL
Unsure how to voice hisopinions
to civic servants
Feels the process might be toocumbersome
Ideate.
Through our research, we know what the pain points and
frustrations of our users are.
Let’s attempt to come up with ideas which can
solve problems which the users experience.
What problems are we trying to
alleviate ?
People don't know how
grassroots democracy operates
Based on our interviews and research, we found that there is a general lack of awareness as how civic amenities keep a city running.
Citizens don't know
-
Who their elected representatives are
-
Who works various executive positions that oversee civic service
-
The organizations within the city that execute public services
Citizens don t know how to voice
their concerns to public officials
The general sentiment is that reaching out to a public official is complicated and a hassle. This is partly due to the opinions or perceptions common citizens hold of bureacratic processes.
Could we establish a line of communication between an elected representative and a citizen which offers practicality, ease of use and serves the purpose of discourse ?
What s the correct way to
voice your opinion ?
Public service and bureacracy is an area frought with an unending pile of paperwork.
Citizens don't know
-
What the right paperwork is for a process like this
-
What the correct format and approach is to write a petitio
-
What the process and logistics is to file a petition
Brainstorming
Having formulated an initial set of problems which users face based on our research. We now needed to engage in the development of a set of viable solutions which would work towards addressing our defined problem statement.
In this pursuit we were able to collate a set of ideas which could work to solve the aforementioned problems. All the ideas were compiled onto a MIRO board
THE SOLUTION
Assist citizens with the knowhow of local governance and help enable change through formal petitions
Social computing model
to enable public discourse
To combat the issue of reluctance or hesitation when it comes
to approaching public officials, a well thought out social computing
model where we involve the right stakeholders is the way to go.
Citizens are well exposed to how social models
work having been exposed to platforms like facebook and instagram.
This would offer a conceptual bridge with a reduced learning curve.
Implementation
Breaking down the Social Computing Model
A product of this nature depends on the interaction paradigms we design into the platform.
If the interaction paradigms fail, it means that our users won t be able to conduct meaningful discourse.
Therefore we must provide the tools to enable this.
4
Submit Petitions
The core feature set of our product was outlined after several rounds of ideation and concept research, wherein the concept of submitting a petition was heavily debated. We realized that by providing this featureset we might have some degree of overlap with somthing like Change.org But our competitor analysis also gave us an opportunity to incorporate distinct differentiators which would allow us to stand out in this niche.
Differentiators and Opportunities
1
Location based petitions
2
Improve awareness about local agencies
Petitioners need to know which govermental agencies to submit their petitions to
3
An opportuntity to engage attorneys
Attorneys are on the constant outlook for clients and engage in pro bono work. Can we loop in attorneys into this network ?
Change.org petitions are open to signatures from anywhere. So can we lock in petitions based on the citizens domicile state ?
1
Posts and Comments
2
Post Feed
3
Upvotes & Downvotes
Could this be a linkedin premium for attorneys?
-
Attorneys can help citizens with their petition
-
Perform outreach within the community to improve their visibility as legal professional
-
Alleviate the negative connotations associated with the legal profession
Design Concept
It’s time to bring our ideas to life . All of the efforts put in for user research , competitor analysis , ideation now must be directed towards achieving a material and interactable UI.
Paper Prototyping
Concept sketches intended to serve
as an early draft for low fidelity
wireframing.
A ton of variations,and introspection
led us to work out patterns which would
serve as a base for the visual design.
Visual Design
Typography
H1 Headline
Welcome to Activision
Rubik-Regular / 22px / #0F0F0F
H2 Headline
Welcome to Activision
Rubik-Regular / 18px / #0F0F0F
H3 Headline
State Government to petition
Rubik-Regular / 14px / #0F0F0F
Paragraph
City buses whilst in great condition are in short supply. If I need a bus to go 8 miles outside the city I might have to pick a route which doesn’t directly take me to my destination and this adds unnecessary stops and wastes time.
Rubik-Regular / 12px / #0F0F0F
Color Pallete
Primary CTA Blue
#1976D2
Secondary Blue
#1976D2
Success
#1976D2-xxxx
Secondary Text
#D0D0D0
Background Color
#FFFFFF
Design Breakdown
-
Title Description of the social issue. Capped at 180 characters to keep the content brief, concise and easily sharable on twitter
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Detailed description of the problem
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Multimedia options to embed along with the post
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Information section which is automatically updated to enable users of this platform to provide clarity as to the governmental agencies which would have to be petitioned.
-
This section would be auto generated via recommendations through the description and textual content of the issue at hand.
Create a Post
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The home feed acts as a collection point for all launched petitions.
-
Users can only see petitions posted by people living in the same domicilliary state.
-
People viewing the posts can comment and share their opinions.
Home Feed
Petition Breakdown
-
The process of drafting a petition has been broken down into 4 stages
-
Forum - A common ground for people to discuss and debate issues through comments and upvotes/ downvotes
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Townhall - Users can schedule either virtual or inperson meetings to discuss and debate potential change
-
Poll - Users can post polls to get real quantitative feedback on questions and concerns.
-
Petition - A step by step introspective process to carefully develop the language and objective of the petition
Petition Drafting
The process of drafting a petition has been broken down into
4 stages to enable introspection
1
Define your goal & What is the nature of the issue
2
Why should this matter to signatories
3
What changes are you proposing
Petition compilation and submition
Petition Signing
Published petitions are listed for users to view and sign
Solve problems together !
Role based segregation of responsibilities involving everyone from
Joe Q Taxpayer to the legal counsel to successfully file your petition !
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