Find My Rep is a complementary website to accompany the Find My Rep app that I designed in my first project. The site helps users find and contact their local and federal representatives, and is broader in focus than the dedicated app. It empowers people to feel politically engaged, and enables them to make their voices heard.

This was a individual project that challenged me to plan and direct each step of the design process for a fictional responsive website. I conducted research and empathized with users, defined the problems to be solved, ideated solutions, created wireframes and mockups, built low- and high-fidelity prototypes, and tested my designs via usability studies.

Since this was a solo project for my UX certification class, I relied on friends and family for research and testing purposes, which is not a true representative sample of users. It does, however, give a good idea of the process that I would use if I were designing for a real product.

October – December 2023

Problem statement

Eric is a musician who needs a quick way to contact his representatives because he doesn't have much spare time.

Goal Statement

Our app will let users quickly find their representatives’ names and contact information, which will affect busy individuals by giving them the ability to make their voices heard with minimal time and effort. 

Value Proposition

• Reliable, up-to-date database

• Election reminders

• Multiple methods of contact information

• Tailored information about local, state, and federal representatives   

• Location services or zip code entry for instant info retrieval

• Statistics on contact and response rates

Based on insights from the usability study, I de-emphasized the scripts feature of the site, and instead added stat charts for each representative. Broad-use scripts were too generic to be of use, whereas stats are useful information on what contact methods work best, and encourage people to contribute their own data.

• I made sure my colors were high-contract and met WCAG AA compliance. 

• Icons include text, which is important for screen readers.

• I included multiple options for communication, which is useful to people with speech limitations, and also helpful for people who simply do not like to talk on the phone.

• I used headings with different sizes, for clear visual hierarchy, and used only two typefaces, both sans-serif, for each of reading.

“This is super useful” – study participant A

“It's simple and clean” – study participant C

“It’s really simple and straightforward” – study participant D

People are frustrated by a lack of easily-available information. If they cannot easily get the information they need to contact their reps, it either becomes a chore, or they skip it entirely. 

Focusing on the needs of the users will always result in a better design. Also, placing a main focus on accessibility ultimately creates a product that is better for everyone.

I did not have time to do an additional round of user testing once I had built the high-fidelity prototypes. Also, since I was relying on friends and family to be my testers, I felt bad asking them to test both the desktop and mobile versions. In a real-world situation, I'd want to do additional testing, and test on both desktop and mobile. This would surely identify weak areas that could be further improved.