Youth Vote - What do you Stand for?

Collection
Design Strategy (MBA) | Design Division

Course
Fall 2014Experiences StudioNathan ShedroffDSMBA-606-1A
Final project
Student(s)
Kathleen Rothar Watson, Tracy Sparks, Siddharth Priyadarshi
Description
YOVO is a digital application, utilizing an engaging news experience that motivates voter to make informed voting decisions and to articulate their voice in a way that empowers them to influence local, national and global leadership.

YOVO is a digital social news application that helps first- time voters determine where they stand on today's political issues, know how similar or different their views are from presidential candidates and other users, and  allows them to speak out on the issues they care about.   
Curated news will be delivered over a mobile app from Twitter and Circa as well as content curated by the YOVO editorial team with key fact checking partners.  In addition, the working prototype "Visulaizer" plots the user's political perspective in 3d space for the dimensions: 1) use of  military action overseas, 2) environmental law enforcement, 3) income equality, and 4) the importance of social values (relating to marriage, abortion, God, etc).  
Woven into the app, users answer a series of questions that force them to take a stand, so as to winnow out political perspectives. For the prototype, we used questions from the highly regarded Pew Research Typology survey to establish positions along a greater-than/less-than scale.  Answers to the questions are then mapped along the dimensions (military, income equality etc.) and plotted on to 3d space. 
Questions on issues can be answered all at once, or one at a time. Questions on issues can be given an importance rating as well.  In the case of one question on a issue at a time, the question is made relevant to the current news event being viewed.  This allows the gradual construction of  the user's 3D profile, which happens organically without much disruption. More quiz questions covering a broader and deeper representation of political issues will be added along with an addition comment box.  Each answer brings more accuracy to plotting the user's profile postion in space with respect to the current candidates and the user's friends' profile plot.   Political candiate data is provided by open source API. 

Links to resources


Details