OVERVIEW
About the Project
Members of the Volunteer Tech/Data team worked with Friends of Andrew Yang to design and develop a responsive event map experience for the 2020 Andrew Yang presidential campaign. The goal was to help volunteers quickly and easily find nearby events.
When I joined, the team had already determined basic features and had a general idea of the desired user experience. My role was to create wireframes and a high fidelity prototype to share with the client (the campaign).
Team: Project Manager/UX Specialist, UX/UI Designer (me), several rotating developers
Role: Volunteer UX/UI Designer for 2 weeks (August 2019)
Tools: Sketch, InVision
Role: Volunteer UX/UI Designer for 2 weeks (August 2019)
Tools: Sketch, InVision
THE CURRENT USER EXPERIENCE
Limitations of MobilizeAmerica
MobilizeAmerica helps campaigns activate volunteers by automating communication and giving volunteer hosts a platform to organize their own events. However, for volunteers seeking events, the user interface is limited in how information can be sorted and visualized. This problem is especially pronounced on smaller, mobile screens.
THE IDEAL USER EXPERIENCE
Key Features and Design Inspiration
The target user is a volunteer on a mobile device. Due to the fast pace of the campaign cycle and limited resources, the team pulled from UX best practices to inform MVP features for the user. The user should be able to:
• Toggle between map or list view. Each view is a separate and clear experience.
• Filter by event type. Event types were identified by the campaign.
• Filter by date. User can see events today, this week, this month, or all of the above.
• Make filtering global. Filters impact both map and list views.
PROTOTYPING
Designing High-Fidelity Mockups
I designed multiple variations of each screen type: 1.) map view 2.) card view 3.) date dropdown 4.) event type dropdown 5.) list view. This enabled the team to visualize possible solutions, consider development time, as well as share options with the campaign.
DEVELOPMENT
Pursuing an Alternate Solution
The project was developed, however, unforeseen circumstances prevented the project from moving forward.
In November 2019, another small team of volunteers worked together to create an event map experience and quickly developed YangNearMe.com. I was able to recommend elements of the designs above as well as provide UX/UI related feedback on early versions of the project. YangNearMe went on to replace the MobilizeAmerica interface for volunteer events.
CONCLUSION
Reflection and Takeaway
This experience marked my first time volunteering for a presidential campaign in a technical capacity. We functioned like an agency and worked quickly in a short amount of time. I learned that it’s ok to follow best practices. When a project is pressed for time and resources, the team can leverage what is already proven to work. By following best practices in UX design and gathering inspiration from common UI patterns, we were able to quickly deliver an interface for sorting and visualizing upcoming events.
