This project was part of our Advanced UX Methodologies course. Local election voter turnouts have been abysmally low in Aotearoa, and our task was to find a way to get Kiwis more involved in voting in local elections. The final product could be anything– an awareness campaign, a website, an app– the possibilities were limitless as long as we followed and documented good design practices.
To keep our goals realistic, my team decided to focus on a specific segment of the population, instead of attempting to solve the issue for the entire NZ voting body. Our desk research indicated that the youth demographic in NZ has one of the lowest voter turnouts. Being young-ish students ourselves, we figured this would be an interesting niche to tackle and explore.
A 2016 Local Government New Zealand Report states that young people aged 18-24 are less likely to vote, with only 39% of that age group actively voting. This rate is nearly half the national average turnout rate, and past surveys have indicated the same pattern of youth disengagement with local elections.
A major hurdle in young people's ability to vote is lack of accessible and reliable information about the candidates, as well a lack of knowledge about the role and importance of local governing bodies. This issue ends up being cyclical; young people don't vote, and so their interests and needs aren't met, as a result of which they think the local council isn't relevant to their lives, which then means they don't bother voting.
Our goal thus, was to establish a connection in the youth voting population's mind between some of the daily issues they face and how their local council can help them alleviate some of these struggles.
To better identify the issues that young people care about and their concerns about their future, we decided to interview some of the young people in our lives. We wanted to better understand their perspective to figure out how to convince them that voting in local elections can help alleviate some of those issues. We also wanted to identify what channels of media are best for transmitting this information.
Our qualitative interviews provided some much needed and interesting insights into a young person's thoughts on voting.
The main source of candidate information, i.e., the candidate booklet is seen as a biased and incomplete source, and so participants find it hard to trust and choose the candidates based on just that.
There is a reliance on news reports and word of mouth when gauging who to vote for. The news is a great source of impartial information, while talking to one's peers can spark discussion that engages voters.
Rising cost of living, soaring house prices, and environmental concerns are some of the biggest issues affecting young people. However, they are unconvinced that voting in local elections will help address these issues.
Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are valuable tools. Candidates with a strong social media presence, coupled with events like debates and speeches on campus can help engage young voters.
After identifying the problems that plague young people, and learning more about how they engage with politics, we decided to design an information campaign that would educate them on the importance of local elections. The centerpiece of our campaign would be a series of eye catching posters, displayed around town in strategic locations. Accompanying this would be a short informative comic, posted to Instagram, that would redirect readers to a website that helped them register to vote.
Since I had extensive illustration experience, I was excited to take the lead while working on this second half of our project.
We created posters that identify students' primary issues in relation to the local government's role in order to increase their understanding of the responsibilities of local governments. Based on the research we did, we chose three issues that most concern students, namely: expensive housing and rental costs, high cost of living, and climate change. For the assignment, we chose to focus high rent as a topic to further develop into the final poster.
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I wanted the poster to be eye-catching at an immediate glance. Instead of being overly didactic and loaded with text, the art direction for these pieces would more akin to an album cover, or a high fashion photo shoot. I wanted to use a powerful yet vibrant image that would intrigue viewers and draw in their attention. Once the image had them interested, we would be able to hook them in with our message.
Based on feedback from my teammates, I made some adjustments to the design before rendering the final illustration. Instead of a tattered ballgown, the character in the piece was dressed like an everyday student with an artsy, slightly rebellious look. I also made sure the composition of the image would not be negatively affected by the addition of text. Once the illustration was complete, I handed the files over to my teammates to work on the typography.
Keeping in line with the cheeky nature of the illustration, we juxtaposed the dynamic visual action with the word "negotiate". Our hope was to create a connection between student's feelings of frustrations and link them to voting as a direct action they could take to improve their conditions. We also added a QR code, that viewers could scan to learn more. The link would take them to the Wellington Youth Council's Instagram page, featuring a comic that further explained our messaging.
Since I had extensive prior experience making comics, I took charge of scripting and drawing this one as well. I kept the poster's limited colour palette, but used a simplified, "cute" art style instead. This was inspired by slice-of-life style comic strips that are quite popular on social media, as the goal was to use the art to attract attention to our cause.
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A link would be provided in the comic's caption allowing readers to click through and enroll to vote in the next local election. This made sure our message was accompanied by an actionable task for viewers to complete, and provided them with the next steps they could take to easily do it.
We conducted a site analysis of the area around our campus, noticing spots with high foot traffic that were frequented by students. These areas often have posters advertising local events and businesses, as well as vibrant street art, so we felt our posters would fit in well here too.
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We also created some mockups of what the posters would look like once displayed in these areas.
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We also made mock ups to consider displaying our work on public transit. Since Wellington has a pretty robust public transit system that a lot of students use, it made sense to utilise that as another avenue to get our message out.
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Due to time constraints, I was unable to fully render the other two poster ideas we had had. However, we decided to come up with slogans and mock up some typography for them anyways. This way, we could show how the posters would look in tandem as part of a cohesive campaign. They also served as a proof of concept for further iterations, a jumping off point for future campaigns.
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Our biggest limitation on this project was time. With an incredibly short turnaround time of 3 weeks, our first week was misspent figuring out what to focus on. Since the initial brief was quite broad, our team of 5 had too many good ideas, and not enough focus. Once we had narrowed down our vision, we only had two weeks to research, design, and present our idea. This definitely taught me the importance of time management, and how sometimes getting started work on a “good enough” idea is much better than deliberating over a “perfect” one.
This project was especially fun for me to work on. While I had done illustrations for past projects during my ux course, this is the first time I got to design a piece based on ux research methodologies. Instead of focusing only on the art itself, I had to keep several other factors in mind. I also enjoyed involving my teammates in the design process. Collaborating and bouncing ideas around definitely helped elevate the piece.
UX Designer • Artist • Daydreamer
