Introducing Branch - a nonpartisan voter research mobile app.
I worked with the CEO of this start up to develop a mobile app for Branch, a nonpartisan voter research website. The app focuses on a candidate matching feature that makes the research and candidate selection process quicker and helps users to vote with confidence and impact.
Understanding the Landscape
Branch is making elections below the presidential level convenient and digestible, so that people can vote with confidence and impact. Branch is a free-to-use, nonpartisan website that informs you on your districts’candidates.
The ask was to design an end-to-end app for Branch with an added feature to fast track the candidate research and voting process even more and make users feel confident in their decisions and save them time. Even with all the information Branch provides in on convenient place, the research process can take 15-25 minutes or more per race. The objective of the app was to fast track this process with a candidate recommendation component.
Listening to the Users
A survey was used to gain user insights. The research results provided great insights and reaffirmed the value this product could provide. Participants indicated that the candidate matching feature could be trusted be a trusted resource, especially when coupled with their own research. User trust is key to the success of a product like this.
Information Architecture
An integral part of the process is the information architecture to help users to navigate through complex sets of information effortlessly. My competitive research and learnings of industry best practices helped inform the initial heuristics and taxonomy assumptions for this app as it would be critical to the issues quiz feature and what topics were most important to users. It was also important to mirror some of the structure of the website version for consistency and familiarity. For this exploration, the user journey begins with a current Branch user sharing their ballot information with a friend. The friend downloads the app to research the candidates and fast track their ballot choices with the “Match with a Candidate” feature.
Sketches & Wireframes
Building off the Information architecture, I began with screen sketches that increased to low-fidelity wireframes, keeping in mind that this needed to reflect the existing Branch brand and website structure while still having its own identity.
Branding
The Branch branding was already in place. The use of a purple palette reinforces the nonpartisan nature of this website. I leveraged their typography style, color palette and creative sensibilities to extend this to the mobile app. I developed additional icons to signify categories and convey information visually to cut down on content and clutter. Interestingly, the usability testing revealed the need to rethink and refresh the branding which perhaps will be addressed in future iterations.
Brand Kit
The brand kit reinforces the existing Branch brand and includes a full color palette, illustration style and examples of icons, button treatments and other assets.
User Interface Design
With the branding and information architecture in place, the wireframes now comes to life with user interface design. The overall user interface was designed to be an extension of the Branch brand.
Usability Testing
Next a high-fidelity prototype was developed for usability testing. I conducted user tests via Maze. My goal was to gather feedback on the overall architecture and to discover any friction that the user might experience throughout the process. I also asked some open-ended questions to gather overall impressions and dig deeper about whether they could trust the information and matching results. Finally, I asked about their feelings about the current branding.
High Fidelity Prototype Video
I put together a final high fidelity prototype video focusing specifically on the candidate matching user journey.
Reflections
Being a user of the Branch product and a big fan, I was delighted to work with the CEO to explore an app version of this product with a focus on the candidate matching feature. Based on the user research there continues to be a growing need for this product, especially with the record turnout and interest in our election process seen in 2020. The candidate matching feature could certainly add value to the existing product and future iterations to integrate that option should be explored.
Other exciting opportunities that were uncovered that could be explored were related to social connections and perhaps a “show me how my friends are voting" feature that speaks to the importance of friend recommendations and adds to the trust and user confidence in a product like this.