CivicUp

Inspiration

We were heavily inspired by websites like the Davis county's towns meeting site, along with many others such as the government official websites for voting reminders and information, which all commonly showcased accessible open information to dates, locations of towns meeting and also information about the local government. We wanted to have a similar colorful and easy to navigate interface for our project as well.

What it does

CivicUp provides an accessible and reliable source of different resources in health, housing, to provide an easier breakdown of topics and ideas related to how they can reach for help and get accurate up to date information related to elections and government events. They can also learn about politicians, directly connecting to them and sharing their anonymous thoughts about the current political situation.

How we built it

Through Figma, we created various lo-fi to mid-fi and high-fi demonstrations of CivicUp. In our initial stages of sketching and brainstorming, we established pain points that users tend to face upon their engagement with the local government. Being able to understand and listen to their common struggles, helped guide us in the right direction of including features that would help alleviate their challenges. We settled on creating a verification process, allowing our users to sign up and create an account. We truly wanted this app to have an element of personalization. Thus in the process, we decided to customize the app to be as useful and helpful to the user as possible, with filters and self assessments in the beginning of the app evaluating their needs and ideas they are most passionate for.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we faced during the Design stage, was establishing a consistent brand identity across our app. The main colors we selected to represent CivicUp was orange and purple. For our onboarding images, we wanted to include a consistent arrangement of orange backgrounds for each page. However, we were unsure of what design strategy here would be more effective, more orange or less orange, and if we include it should it be more of a gradient or block of colors. After several test runs and samples, we decided to keep the orange background consistent and included it for all pages of the onboarding. Moving on to the app, we incorporated the orange in an accent, by including orange in blocks towards the top to establish a clear dashboard feel. We continued to incorporate our colors, purple, white, and black, across the different pages as necessary with various icons to enhance our categories.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're incredibly proud of the UI friendly component of our app. Despite the heavy load of information being introduced, we created an app that would be easily accessible to read, understand, and engage with. We chose colors that were bright, exciting, and fun to uplift the experience. We included images and icons to elevate our visual presentation of politicians and filter options.

What we learned

We learned that many of the challenges to engage with the local government is caused due to a lack of information. Many of our interviewees feel their voices are unheard because they belong to the minority groups. Their primary source for news updates are through pamphlets, social media, and word of mouth. However, users who feel that they are heard have actively engaged in online resources advocating about community involvement. The common consensus was that with clearer explanations of local government decisions and its impacts on the people, ensuring they feel heard, and have access to convenient resource to access reliable info, potentially encouraging future individuals to feel motivated to want to be involved in their local government.

What's next for CivicUp

Including features that would allow users to stay up to date with live election progress, such as in which presidential candidate is in the lead in each state. We would want this feature to also explain the election process, breaking down what cycle the election is in (rather that may be one week in, or three days remaining).

Built With

• figma