Product Case: Designing a product to encourage voting

A study found out that even a rise in temperature of 1 degree Celsius is enough to affect voter turnouts!

Before going into solutions, there are a few things that should be stated

Why is voting important?

Voting is one of our fundamental rights in a democracy. It is the sole upholder of justice, fairness, and a rare chance to voice our collective opinion in a world that often feels unfair. Our democratic juggernaut of a machine seems only to run for votes. It is what steers the direction of nations.

Why are low voter turnouts a problem?

If a lowly product manager of a tech company needs to ensure his experiments are run on an unbiased sample of users before taking a decision, the same should hold for the biggest decision there is. Who should run our country? And yet, 1/3rd of our population regularly do not turn up on voting day. While individually a single vote may not seem much, this is definitely where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Especially when there’s so many instances of elections being won by tight margins.

Okay, that’s enough of me rambling about politics…

Outcome

More voter turnout during elections

Assumptions

• We are not going to be changing the established voting mechanism
• The solution will be a digital product

User Segments

There are multiple MECE approaches to segment the population: Age, Gender, Income Level, Geography etc.

For now, let’s use age and bucket them into 4 groups

Below 18, Young Voters (18–30), Mature Voters (30–60), Seniors (60+)

Which segment showcases the most friction? Where can we make the largest impact? The answer to both these lies in the younger age groups. But between the two, I will lean towards young voters where the impact can be more immediate. With the 1st group, it will be difficult to attribute the success of the product to future voter turnout figures.

Reasons for prioritizing Young Voters

1. One of the largest segments
2. Most friction
3. Immediate positive impact measurement

Pain Points

Broadly, the pain points can be classified into two groups

Attitude/Awareness

1. Disinterest in politics/ political landscape
2. Unaware of the importance of voting
3. Lack of opinion
4. Unaware of candidates, past performance, proposed policies
5. Frustrated with politics
6. Doesn’t think one vote matters

Logistics

1. Need to be physically present at the booth
2. Not sure about the voting procedure
3. Doesn’t want to wait in long queues

Prioritization: While issues on the day of voting are important and can be detrimental, the bigger problem lies before that. If a person has made up his mind on who to cast a vote on, they are much more likely to overcome small adversities to cast their vote. So, we should be looking at awareness.

Among the awareness pains, 1 is a difficult one to resolve. Politics isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and TBH we don’t necessarily need to be actively involved in its myriad intricacies to have a fairly informed opinion while casting a vote. Number 2 while important is not something that may directly have the impact we want. It might also be fair to assume a good chunk of the people are aware of voting and how it matters already and still don’t cast their vote.

Numbers 3 and 4 are interrelated and are extremely important. They are possibly the biggest barriers when it comes to forming an opinion, and as we know, without an opinion, its unlikely we are going to cast a vote. Let us hence focus on solving these two.

Product Vision

How might we build a product that helps form individual opinions in an unbiased fashion for upcoming elections?

Solutions

1. Voter education platform — A dedicated platform to provide updates on upcoming elections, standing contestants, their track records etc.

Comment: In an ideal world, this might be the right approach, but it requires people to download a dedicated app for this. Given that one of the frictions is a lack of interest, how many would go through it?

2. Content push — Push content to channels that young voters throng to with related topics they care about (e.g. Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc.) Content could include info on standing candidates, election dates, development/policies on topics the users care about, 60-second elevator pitches etc.

Comment: I like this idea, these are channels frequented by our user segments and present content in a format they love. However, questions will remain regarding who’s making this account and it’s content? How do we regulate it? What’s in it for Instagram/FB/YT?

3. Social opinions— Create public or private groups with friends/family and get anonymized trends of opinions on subject matters. Users may also get a view on how many of their friends/family are casting votes.

Comment: We tend to value or at the very least take consideration of the opinions of those closest to us. Having a fun dashboard that summarizes such opinions can be a great way to introduce a more healthy political discussion in the social circle. But this requires participation from users other than the ones who are disinterested. Also, it may touch upon topics beyond what’s necessary for the coming election. The solution doesn’t directly address the pain points we prioritized.

4. Politician’s Profile — An official public profile for politicians that would contain basic details, track key achievements and summarize opinions/views. This can also be a space for the general public to engage with the page to show appreciation or disapproval.

Comment: This is another idea that really addresses the core of the issue. A major major problem today is that there’s so much content on politics and politicians, and yet there isn’t a clear, concise view of who they really are and what they stand for. Having an official source will create a chance for politicians to directly engage with the younger generation while more details like (party affiliation, times contested, win/loss ratio, votes % etc.) can be curated by GOI for legitimacy.

Big Assumption: Users do not consume information from most media formats (online, TV, papers etc.) either from lack of trust, time etc.

5. Simulation/gamification— This is a fun one. There are a ton of strategy games out in the market that simulate things like managing a farm, an amusement park, or even civilizations. How would a game that simulates and gamifies the modern political landscape? Games can be both a medium of storytelling and entertainment as well as education.

Comment: Although I really dig this, I feel this is tied more towards pain point 1 rather than solving for the immediate voter turnout of an upcoming election.

Big assumption: A large proportion of the chosen segment likes playing strategy/simulation games for entertainment.

Prioritization

It’s easy to see that this is a complex problem and each solution has it’s own set of challenges and questions when it comes to implementation. But looking at the potential for the highest impact on our chosen pain points, I think “Politician’s Profile” is the most appropriate solution from the lot.

User Stories

1. As a citizen, I want to access a politician’s official profile because I want to learn more about their background, experience, and qualifications before deciding whether to support them or not.
2. As a voter, I want to track a politician’s key achievements and initiatives because I want to evaluate their effectiveness and impact on important issues that matter to me and my community.
3. As a citizen, I want to see a summary of a politician’s opinions and views on various topics because I want to understand their stance on key issues and make informed decisions during elections.
4. As a citizen, I want to agree/disagree with some a quoted achievement to reduce ambiguity between reality and promise.