Redesign That: Design That Moves Politics? (Part 1)

By Guest Authors Charley Bush and Kathy Hwang

2008 has been called “the year of the young voter.” Eighteen- to thirty-one-year-old voters turned out in droves to the presidential primaries, and the media is scrambling to capture this audience. Who would have ever thought that CNN would co-host a debate with YouTube? Or that you would be able to instant message questions to candidates through the MySpace/MTV presidential dialogues? Yet it’s not so surprising that politics would cater to this new tech-savvy and social-networked Millennial Generation (also known at Generation Y). Representing more than a third of U.S. votes (over 50 million), their participation is vital in deciding the outcome on November 4th.

Being Millennials ourselves, we are now proud to say that although our generation may have dragged our feet on it, we do indeed care about politics. Perhaps we ought to thank our current president for spurring us into action. But why on earth does it have to be such a chore to learn about it? When we scoured the web to find out more substantive information about the candidates, we were left wading through laundry lists of dry bullet points, surely meant to confuse as much as they are to inform.

We know these websites can have the power to engage young voters to not only register to vote, but also understand our choices for election 2008. For this month’s article, we dive into doing just that through design.

ANALYSIS: MARKET LANDSCAPE
Here are two key websites have emerged on the scene to target young voters.

1) Glassbooth (www.glassbooth.org):
Featured in Wired magazine this year, Glassbooth offers a fresh take on politics through a nonpartisan website. Visitors take a quiz and explore how their views match up with = those of the presidential candidates.

Design analysis: Glassbooth does a good job of creating a simple streamlined interface that incorporates links to video clips, articles and wiki definitions. Yet it still loaded with list after list of dry text. For a target market of young voters, the energy of this site is surprisingly low. Even the New York Times election website had a more engaging interface.

2) Rock The Vote (www.rockthevote.com):
With high visibility among Millennials, this group uses music, popular culture and new technologies to engage young people and give them the tools to learn about the issues that affect their lives.

Design analysis: Rock the Vote has clearly got their demographic down. They incorporate a lot of simple pieces of information, apply saturated color in key places and give high visibility to the presence of young voters. However, the site can be as visually overwhelming as walking through Times Square. They’re also missing the more detailed information on the candidates that are critical to understanding the issues.

ANALYSIS: MARKET TRENDS

Several trends have emerged on the political online market, the biggest of which is YouTube. In mid-January, something unfathomable happened. Barack Obama’s speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church was viewed over a half million times, surpassing Britney Spears as the most watched video of the day! YouTube has provided a quick, visual and digestible way for people to share information.

Another trend is that rather than tuning in to O’Reilly or Olbermann, we’ve seen a rise in visitors to nonpartisan websites like Factcheck.org, which give Millennials an immediate and unbiased way to check up on which candidate “Joe the Plumber” would really agree with.

Finally, you can see the adoption of social technology even on the campaign websites. Obama has actually raised more funding than any candidate in history through small individual donations over the Internet.


Screenshots from Obama’s website (left) and McCain’s website (right).

ANALYSIS SUMMARY:
There is clearly an opportunity for a design that mixes the non-partisan clarity of Glassbooth and the personality of Rock the Vote: a simple, but dynamic interface that is (1) visually-explorative, (2) socially expressive and (3) empowering to young voters.

(Part 2 of this article will explore design concepts to address this issue.)

This segment is part 1 in the series : Redesign That: Design That Moves Politics?
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