WIP digital canvassing project
Progress over perfection. I’ll make this nicer later. In the meantime, here’s a gif I made to show folks how to use the app and some other bits and bobs.
🙋🏻♀️What’s digital canvassing?
It’s a way for anyone to leverage existing, persuasive, pro-candidate social media posts to swing the vote in their direction.
Context
We focused on helping Kamala win the 2024 presidential election.
My approach: design hammer
I joined less than 2 months before the election. With a short 10-12 hours a week to devote to our MVP, I asked the team to point me to their problems (i.e. nails) and I’d solve them (i.e. hammer). Low polish, high progress.
Result
In less than 55 hours, I established branding and UX across 2 web apps, public training materials, a written guide, and partnership flows. Some stuff was coded on the fly without any design input and I have mixed feelings about that, but I also recognize I’m not on this full-time and the work must continue. It’s strange loosening the reigns on polish, but that’s an MVP with seed money weeks before an unstoppable deadline.
Role & Team
Design Lead with 1 PM, 2 Engineers, 1 Marketing Manager, and 4 other part-timers.
What could have gone better?
More time and money would have helped up-level the polish and thoughtfulness of the experience.
The organization was pretty flat, meaning there was no clear person with final say over any one domain.
Content design felt like a competing priority. I navigated this by asking the core 3 team members where they’d rather I spend my time and the answer was consistently visual design. It led to content decisions I disagreed with, but was at peace with given the constraints.
Lots of thrash. This goes hand-in-hand with thoughtfulness. I’m happy to make and remake things, but spending the time to agree on what the team needs from design would help their budget go farther.
What happened next?
Oooh this is a real nail biting TBD. I’m writing this before Election Day. Here’s a couple cats to keep you company.
