BE THE VOICE

How might we better engage citizen in the election process and motivate them to vote?

Project Brief

The current voting situation showed that California voter turnout was at all-time low for the 2014 elections. Our challenge was to come up with an innovative solution (feasible and scalable) that will increase the voter turnouts for the next election.

Role: Innovation strategist, Creative lead
Duration:  5 months I Fall 2016
Team: Tyler Rivenbark, Haven Simsar, Rumaisa Mughal, Alicia Navajas, Patchanok Koychusakun

The Challenge

People aged 18-30 are consumed with life: education, employment, financial stability. The future is overwhelming and they don’t see the impact of their vote. This forms a disconnect between voting and the implication of doing so

Needs Finding

According to our researches, 91% of California Citizens at the age of 18 - 30 are not voting, our team chose them as our target users. We used Value Proposition Canvas and Journey Mapping as a tool to better understand their behaviors. By plotting and visualizing their pains, gains and needs, and discover their journey through the current election process, we found that young people want to vote! They think they should vote. But they are too consumed with life, education, employment and financial stability. The future is very overwhelming. This forms a disconnect between voting and the implication of doing so.

What if... 

we can make voting an everyday habit, ingrained in our lives and make people realized that they can be change maker everyday?

Creating the New Experience

Our initial concept was to create a whole new experience, which will change people's perception on voting process. We came up with 3 steps journey, where each step create different kind of emotional resonance with the target users, begin with evoking the sense of curiosity, and than create a memorable invigorating experience and keep the emotional engagements continuously, even after the election day. The highlight of the experience will be an event, we wanted to create the connection between real - life event and digital platform.

From Explore to Experiment

Moved on from concept building phase, we agreed on the 3 steps of evoking experience, one of the touch point we came up with as an Urban Installation - Interactive Wall.  As easy as taking a selfie - you are a part of bigger community already. Their selfies pictures will be captured and shows as a part of California map. The wall will be our main tools to evoke the sense of community.

We put up an installation prototype and watched how people would interact with it, the response we got was great, but more than that we gain some insights from target users behaviors and improve our product according to the feedback.

Outcome

This is Us - with a mix of ambition minds, the insights we discovered, and the strong qualitative data led us to the idea of creating an organization, with the mission of increasing voter turnout among young voters. We imagine our organization supporting young voters throughout the voting journey - relieving some of their pain and getting them excited about the opportunity to vote!

US (Be the voice. Vote.) is a non - partisan, incentive based. We re-brand the voting experience to motivate eligible voters to VOTE. Through a series of Interactions  + installations that connect and individual's daily actions (or impact), evoke the sense of community and give them the long-lasting memory through a celebration party on the voting nights.

We are weaving movement through our urban and rural environments to move people to vote. Through a system of engagements, we are focusing citizens minds on the importance of voting. Engaging voters minds in everyday actions with a wrist band. Gripping the attention of citizens bodies and minds with a voting installation and reminding the individual of the strength of the community with a celebration of their vote to shape an intentional future

We weave movement through our urban and rural environments to move people to vote. Through a system of engagements, we are focusing citizens minds on the importance of voting. Engaging voters minds in everyday actions with a wrist band. Gripping the attention of citizens bodies and minds with a voting installation and reminding the individual of the strength of the community with a celebration of their vote to shape an intentional future.

Be the Voice . VOTE.