poli
Poli is a mobile app which aims to give a voice to marginalised demographics. The global right to free speech is often suppressed, with populations being silenced by governments or being too afraid to speak out because of the threat of violence or imprisonment.
Poli aims to eradicate this issue by giving people a platform to vote on controversial laws or government policies without the need to expose themselves to danger or ridicule.
our team
discover
inspiration for this project
We wanted politics to be more accessible. As a group, we wrote out a list of the issues that we faced, and a list that we believed others faced:
- Mainstream politics is complicated
- Difficult to find unbiased political news coverage
- Information and debates on social media are untrustworthy
- We do not agree with how social media platforms are designed to fuel conflict in political discussions between their users
- Voicing a political opinion can be extremely dangerous
- People's voices and political opinions can be suppressed by governements
- Political change can sometimes seem like it is unobtainable
- Politicians can act for their own personal gain, instead of making decisions with their constituents best interests in mind
- It is difficult for us to understand why some heavily unfavoured laws are not changed or updated
- Politicians can act without being held accountable for their actions
problem statement
The global right to free speech is often suppressed by governments and a safe space for people to share their political opinions is not available.
This causes problems for marginalised communities because their needs and wants can be more easily ignored by those in positions of power.
This is important because everyone deserves to have their opinions heard and have belief that change for a better life is possible.
discovery objectives
- Better understand the struggles faced by marginalised populations and how they canbe helped
- Learn about other platforms who tackle similar problems
- Explore how a solution could be developed and released
interviews
Poli co-founder, Tom Canetti, carried out interviews with people from across the globe. Each of these people had experience living in areas of political unrest or had faced struggles when trying to achieve political change. We took a huge amount of inspiration and knowledge from these interviews.
You can listen to these interviews on Tom's podcast, The Rocky Road Post.
We also used these interviewees to validate our early design decisions and to test our initial prototypes.
how might we
From the list of problems, we created "How Might We" statements. These statements would help guide us through the ideation and design phase of the project.
- How might we help people learn about politics?
- How might we make politics more accessible?
- How might we make politics more interesting?
- How might we increase the safety of political activism?
- How might we make people understand why others have differing opinions?
- How might we reduce peoples reliance on mainstream news for political information?
- How might we reduce peoples reliance on social media for political information?
- How might we reduce peoples reliance on social media for peer debates?
- How might we encourage encourage political participation?
- How might we make people of differing political beliefs have more constructive debates?
- How might we enable people to seek change from their political leaders?
- How might we enable people to seek change from their political leaders?
- How might we increase peoples understanding of political inaction?
ux site map
userflow 1 - sign up and profile creation
userflow 1 - vote on law and view results
wireframes - sign up flow
wireframes - vote on a law and analyse results
moodboard
high fidelity mockups
colours and branding
illustrations
outcome
next steps
As a team, we brought Poli to a stage where we felt that the development of an MVP and getting user feedback were the next steps.
The search for developers began, but with no financial backing, it proved very difficult to move forward with this project.
We explored options for developing the app within our team, but the workload and learning curve would be too steep to undertake.
Each of the team members had a lot going on in their lives at this time, and ultimately, the project was put on hold.
what i learned
- The need for a structured Discovery phase
- How to set timelines to ensure progress
- Set goals to avoid designing for problems outside of scope
- Mobile app design guidelines
- Development methods for mobile applications
- The differences between apps for iOS and Android
- Marketing strategies
- Interview processes
- Design systems and style guides
