Timeline & Role

• Spring 2024 → I lead the research and design phase to create the initial prototype.
• Summer 2024 → I polished the front-end directly in the codebase and lead co-research initiatives between two clients with similar missions: The Greater Boston News Bureau and the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.
• Summer 2025 → Under the supervision of my SWE practicum, the platform officially launched to the public.

Design

Research Phase I: Define

User Personas

Through surveys and one-on-one interviews with local Bostonians, our team crafted user personas based on two categories: the frequent voter and the infrequent voter. Our goal, really, is to get the infrequent voter out to the polls, but we need the frequent voter to engage them.

We were able to engage with real local leaders and activists in the Boston area, which played a huge role in our understanding of user goals and pain points. The biggest takeaway we got from these leaders was that it is the younger generations they see not showing up to vote in local elections, which altered how we tailored our user personas, and ultimately our interface.

Furthering The Research: Data Meets Design

After the success of the Boston Voter App, I was brought onto an initiative for the Urban League of Massachusetts to use data-driven design to increase voter turnout through mailers. We analyzed census data, which I then combined with the user research I had previously done, to design and generate personal mailers for a select group of boston citizens. We had a group of 10,000 citizens and sent out 5,000 mailers as the experimental group. Analysis was later done on the affects these mailers had on overall voter turnout in local elections.