Simpol
By Patricia Irizarry and Victoria Powell
Simpol is an iOS app that mobilizes young and marginalized voters to take charge and make change, starting with their own communities.
Roughly 24 million Gen Z-ers were eligible to vote in 2020, but only a fraction cast a ballot in the national election. Local elections notoriously have lower participation than national elections, even though local politics have more direct impact on communities. Simpol is determined to demolish educational and accessibility barriers to increase informed voter turnout at the local election level. The past few years have been rife with unprecedented moments, increased environmental destruction, record-high political division, and violence; however, young and marginalized communities continuously show their resilience. Simpol is the platform of choice to create informed and empowered voters, revolutionizing local politics and continuing to incite the spark of change.
Through the lens of Georgia state politics, Simpol’s functionality can be grouped into three features: it simplifies the political jargon so bills are explained in a simple sentence, provides unbiased, sourced information on current and aspiring representatives and 一 the most important step 一 provides direct and easy ways to take action. While Simpol will be extremely useful year-round, it will be especially helpful during election season. By providing voter registration information and reminders, the most current polling information and an easy way to cast informed votes, users will avoid the barriers that prevent political participation. Simpol simplifies a convoluted process and provides a brand new political platform for margianlized communities.
We make politics simpol.
Why We Do It
Ultimately, this Capstone project was created in response to seeing the injustices caused by lack of political involvement and low voter turnout.
Simpol does so by eliminating as many barriers to entry as possible: involving people early in the law-making process, making introduced legislation and laws easy to understand, and making political activism as easy as tapping a button.
Simpol was created after a tumultuous 2020 election season that called into question the integrity of the United States’ democracy.
Preliminary research showed that a dismal proportion of Black men and women were registered to vote in Athens-Clarke county. Other minority groups clearly showed lower amounts of registered voters when compared to caucasian-registered voters in the area. The disparity between the local demographics and the groups of registered voters can be a contributing factor to ultimately skewed political results that affect thousands of lives.
Simpol was created to ensure accurate representation in the political process, taking a step in ensuring local policies are representative of constituents’ needs.
How We Do It
Simpol provides unbiased, transparent resources to help people become active and informed voters through a three-pronged approach.
Bill Translator
Simpol’s core functionality is acting as a translator of legislative bills. The average American reads between a 7th and 8th grade level, yet legislative bills are presented to the public filled with political jargon. This jargon makes it difficult for the average person to understand, and stands as a barrier to active participation in the political process.
Simpol translates these bills by condensing the paragraphs of confusing verbiage into a simple sentence. Bills are categorized by their topic to make them easy to find and have active links to the full PDF version of the bill for the reader to dive into should they choose to.
Representative + Candidate information
To encourage transparency, Simpol has biographies of state representatives available to users. Along with demographic information, the representatives’ biography pages will clearly source information regarding their beliefs and where they fall on the political spectrum.
Simpol will also clearly display contact information for the user’s representatives, encouraging easy forms of political participation. Users will have the option of choosing to craft personalized messages, pre-drafted messages or answer polls in reaction to bills.
Voter + Polling Information
Politics have a sense of seasonality in regards to the voting cycles. Since voting usually involves a series of events leading up to casting a ballot, Simpol will have important date reminders, registration information, necessary documents and other requirements easily accessible to users.
Once the polls are open, Simpol is still incredibly useful to the user. Instead of having to navigate away from the app to search their closest polling location, users find their closest polling location with an interactive map.
Check out our trailer!
Let’s Talk Tech
Simpol is an iOS app developed in XCode with Swift UI.
The app began as low fidelity sketches, then evolved into wireframes in Miro.
From the alpha wireframe that focused on the bill translator’s functionality, we pivoted to focus on the other features of the app for the beta wireframe.
The beta wireframe drew inspiration from several popular apps in both design and functionality that were elevated to suit Simpol’s needs. This wireframe continuously evolved and was improved with data from usability studies and user feedback throughout the duration of the project.
Low-fidelity prototypes were then created utilizing Figma. These prototypes increased in fidelity and were eventually utilized for usability tests.
After prototyping, we began development in earnest.
Using Firebase Storage and Data Analytics, Simpol stores the user’s login information, houses the images and bill information in two storage repositories, and stores multiple APIs to stay up to date on recent news articles on the homepage.
Specifically for the representative section, each image is attached to an access key that calls the file to be displayed on screen. Simpol also utilizes the Kingfisher Swift Package Manager, a library to cache the remotely stored images.
The information solely stored in the application itself is the information that the user inputs, such as their location and name. Simpol was designed with growth in mind — as it currently serves Athens-Clarke County, the design and infrastructure is prepared to be expanded for other county and voter precinct use.
What We’ve Learned
We’ve learned many different lessons throughout the entirety of this project, namely to stay extra hydrated to make up for all the coffee consumption.
But we’ve also come to learn a lot about different legal processes in the state of Georgia. From how a bill becomes a law (School House Rock had it right for the most part!), to how one correctly registers to vote. We probably couldn’t pass for constitutional lawyers yet, but this project has been a thorough first step.
We’ve learned awesome lessons on best UI and design practices that take what we’ve learned in previous coursework and demands it be elevated.
As for technical skills? We went from zero to hero! As in, coming in, we had zero idea the magnitude of this project, from a developer’s point of view, and a matching amount of technical skills. We learned to ask for help (a lot of it!), and take in every resource we could (more about that below!).
One of the most valuable lessons, however, has been learning to “fail fast” and adapt faster. The motto of the NMI hadn’t previously rung truer than this semester — users let us know that some of our design, UI and functionality choices had room for improvement.
What did we do when we received this feedback? Channeled our inner Ross Geller: “Pivot!”
Major Pivots
When we first began Simpol in NMIX7005, the app looked quite different than today’s projected product.
Before Simpol was dubbed so, our app was called “Basic Bills.” The name centered around the main feature of our app and utilized verbiage familiar with the younger target audience; however, it became clear that there was confusion associated with this name. Most often, people assumed the product dealt with finances. Building from this feedback, we brainstormed to get to the core mission of this project: to (sim)plify (pol)itics.
Now an app with three main functionalities, Simpol first began as a simple bill translating app. Through further research into the most common barriers minority voters face during political processes, we expanded our services to include voter rights and candidate research in efforts to increase informed voter turnout.
Looking to Others
As mentioned in the last section, a lot of research went into ensuring that Simpol is a viable product that people would use. Given that Simpol is an app designed for a wide range of members in the community, we wanted to expose the app to as many potential users as possible.
The first form of research came in a competitive advantage report, accessible here.
Below are some of the findings of the competitive advantage report.
As of this medium post, there are no apps with the same mission, functionality and offered features available for download on the iOS or Android app store. Some apps offer voter information, including poll locations, but no apps offer voter information, sourced and trustworthy candidate information and bill simplifying services.
Coupled with our target audiences, we believe that Simpol could easily scale to national services, limited only by our developing capabilities. Just a portion of our target audience is voter-aged Gen Z, which were 24 million individuals in 2020 and growing yearly.
User Testing: Phase 1
After confirming that this app was fulfilling a need in the market, we looked to test if people in the community liked the design and functionality.
The first round of user testing was for a high-fidelity prototype, accessible here.
This user testing gave us great insights, with comments from users including:
This interface is nice and easy to use.
I like how everything’s laid out and how intuitive it is.
However, from the data we were able to find some points of frustrations for our users. Our design of the home page evolved significantly after the study showed that 50% of users wished there was a direct way to access voter information from the home page.
I like how the home page is super informative but there should be something clearer about the voting part.
So we took our findings and applied them towards the on-going development of the app.
We focused on ensuring the voter information page was more clearly identified on the home page, and started to focus on the details of designing — image shapes, text size, accent colors. We were excited to get our beta in front of users after implementing the changes users suggested.
User Testing: Phase 2
The second round of user testing was for our app’s beta.
The most influential findings can be found below, with the entire user testing report accessible here.
The findings of this user testing also directly influenced a new Simpol style guide. By having users test our beta, they helped us solidify the tone and overall aesthetic we wanted to pursue, in addition to solidifying the user interface. Find the newest style guide here.
Simpol Today
We’re not done yet!
Our User Testing Results for Simpol showed a good or excellent experience with participants being able to successfully navigate through the app to complete tasks. Feedback and suggestions received from the report stated to better integrate and use font styles throughout the application, utilize space on each tab to increase functionality and UX experience by adding color blocks, and ensuring that white space is being used properly.
In a 1.1 version of Simpol these recommendations would be implemented in addition to expanding Simpol to reach an audience outside of Athens-Clarke County. The participants in the User Testing Protocol were limited to testing the features of the app that were functioning in the previous beta version. The 1.0 now features all three functioning features, and another round of testing would be conducted to gain insights from overall user experience.
Simpol has the barebones built, now the team has to focus on the aesthetics of the app.
Simpol 1.0 is debuting at the University of Georgia’s Emerge and SLAM events put on by the New Media Institute! Look out for the finished app in the fall of 2021. Head over to Simpol’s website to learn more.
Capstone Journey Overview
(Not So) Wise Words
Take it from a (now demoted) professional procrastinator: There is no such thing as starting too early, but there is such a thing as starting too late!
This project finally kicked my butt enough that I learned to stop putting off deadlines and get something started. Save yourself some nights’ rest and a lot of stress: avoid procrastinating.
It is somewhat simplified when you take into account how these courses build off of each other. If the work you did for a previous class is quality, it’s easy to up-cycle your content; however, if the ball was dropped on an assignment or two, it then adds to the workload for you down the road. Do the assignment the best of your abilities the first time.
Ultimately, my advice boils down to this: start early and do it right the first time! :)
— Patty —
My advice to the next cohort is: choose a project that you’re passionate about.
You’re going to be spending a lot — a lot — of time with this project. Make sure it’s something that you want to get up and work on nearly every day for a year (or two!).
While this may sound daunting, it gets a lot easier when you find your “why.” If you have an idea for a project, why do you want to create it? Or, if you don’t have an idea, think about your existing passions and see if there’s a way to improve upon them or fix a problem.
You’ve got this!
—Victoria —
Valuable Resources
LinkedIn Learning’s Empathy in UX
Paul Hudson’s SwiftUI YouTube Channel
Mastering SwiftUI Textbook
But most importantly… past semesters’ projects!