Your Personal Political Assistant
OUR VISION
In this tumultuous political climate, our service makes it easy for people to be the type of citizen they always wanted to be; engaged, informed, and making a difference.
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We were motivated especially by the inaccessibility of town websites, which were often comprehensive but entirely unusable for people who don’t know how to start getting involved.
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We aim to lower the barrier of entry for Americans to participate in their communities and national politics by providing accessible and consolidated information.
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PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT
STORY
BEGINNING
The idea for PolitCal was born from our own frustration of the lack of engagement many college students have with their communities and government. Of knowing that there so many people who want to make a difference but don't feel empowered or informed enough to follow through.
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IDEATION
Thus we began mapping out the ways we could provide a service that cultivates such political know-how and awareness while also allowing people to focus on the issues they’re passionate about.
DEVELOPMENT
We went through several prototypes and small pivots, changing both the design, and the scope of our service. One of our main focuses came from the observation that people only want to go to events that concern issues in which they are interested. Because of this, we have implemented a robust tagging and searching system within our site, as well as a way for users to explore new issues.
COLLECTING DATA​
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We then conducted multiple surveys, interviews, cognitive walkthroughs and concierge MVPs to test our hypothesis
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CREATING VALUE
Events would be added by the PolitiCal team at first, thought we plan to develop relationships with the towns and municipalities we’re covering, as well as mission-based organizations, to involve them in populating the site and creating an active, engaged, and responsive community.
THE FUTURE
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We want to redefine how the modern citizen views their participation in their community and their government. PolitiCal is meant to help people rediscover their right to enact meaningful change in their own lives and the lives of others.
Hypothesis & MVPs
Surveys
We surveyed 128 people in total.
6/10 people indicated that they feel the act of voting wasn’t as effective as they wish it was. We want to show people that voting isn’t the only aspect of democracy.
25/27 people who said they participate in political organizations expressed desire to get their families and friends involved. We realized that politics has to start from community.
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We found people wanted to be involved in politics without being a member of a larger organization
They also felt they were not educated enough about issues to voice their opinions or to vote in elections
MVPs
We interviewed 30 people, including The Brandeis Democrats club leader.
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Our Concierge MVP sent out emails to Brandeis students with political events happening in Waltham.
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Our Landing Page advertised our service through search engine optimization on Google, in which 50% of the site's visitors attempted to sign up for our service.
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We performed 3 cognitive walkthroughs.
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We sent emails to the Waltham Town Hall, to all club leaders at Brandeis, and we sent a basic concierge MVP with events concerning conservation in Waltham to SEA,
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The Results
The lack of feedback via our multiple emails to clubs and organizations speaks to the unreachability of these resources that are built, in the first place, to connect with their constituent populations.
We found that email is, by far, the worst way to create ongoing discussions with organizations. The bureaucratic process involved in checking and responding to email is likely too much of a barrier.
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Most interviewees indicated they wanted a way to directly contact their representatives.
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We found that people think ballot measures via petitions are the easiest, most tangible way to enact political change.
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OUR PRODUCT
Our events page would allow users to see and manage their personalized event lists as well as learning about their ballot candidates of interest.
Our organization service page is for approved organization users who wish to upload and manage their event postings. An optional paid data service is also available.
Our home page where the users can sign in or sign up to our platform. The sign up link would lead users to a page where they can choose to sign up as individual user or organization.
The explore page would allow users to find out local events related to their interested topics of chosen as well as interesting quizzes about politics and communities.
OUR TEAM
MARA KHAYTER
Senior Student
Major in Computer Science
ANNABELLE WANG
Senior Student
Major in Economics, Computer Science, Psychology
Minor in Business
ANNA BULGER
Senior Student
Major in Computer Science, Philosophy
Minor in Business
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DANBING CHEN
Junior Student
Major in Computer Science
OUR ADDRESS
For any general inquiries, please fill in the following contact form:
