I created the Rally app in an effort to improve voter turnout for young adults. What started as a school project quickly turned into a full-fledged passion project once I realized how passionate I was about making a difference in this problem space. I think there is a real opportunity for technology to improve young voter turnout and inspire young people to get involved in the political process.
Voter turnout for 18-29 year olds is consistently less than 50%, the lowest of all demographics. The lack of unbiased and user-friendly platforms providing accurate political information tailored to the demands of younger generations hinders their ability to make informed decisions and actively engage in the democratic process. I found this statistic unsatisfactory and wanted to do some research into why turnout was so low for my generation. In addition, I ran some initial discovery sessions to uncover user sentiment around the voting and electoral process.
To better understand the problem space and competitive landscape, I conducted a competitive analysis of the current applications within this space and I identified several opportunities for value, highlighted below.
From here, I worked to develop my user persona and user journey map based on the initial discovery sessions that I ran, as well as additional research that I conducted looking at various studies and articles highlighting young voter turnout and challenges. From the user journey, I identified two key areas to provide value, detailed below.
Now having a better understanding of the challenges young voters face I began ideating on a potential solution. I identified three key features that I thought would provide the most value to users and build a user flow around these identified features. From there I iterated through several phases of fidelity, and finally developed a style guide and high fidelity clickable prototype.
The results of this process were the creation of Rally: the app that makes politics less scary for young voters and inspires them to get involved in the political process. See the final designs below and check out the clickable prototype here.
If I were to pursue this project further, the next steps I would take are to run usability testing with potential users of my target demographic and iterate based on feedback. I would also want to develop a strategy to gauge interest from this userbase, likely using social media. Overall, this project was so much fun to complete and I found myself very passionate about this problem space. Maybe one day Rally will become a reality!
