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Ledger
Ledger is a legislative and political resource app for New York State Legislative Politicos. Users are able to get real time notifications, legislative news, and information.
My Role:
End to end UX/UI Designer
Figma, Jira, and Maze
Tools Used:
Responsibilities:
Competitive Analysis, User Research, Brand Design, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing.
Background
In 2017, two private companies held a monopoly on real-time information and notifications for the New York State Legislature. Both of these companies only provided one enterprise level subscription which started out at a minimum of $500 a month.
Currently, there is no app in the market that provides native (device) resources at an individual level of subscription cost. Many need to create a de facto stack which consists of numerous apps and third party resources to find and access information.
Challenge
Lobbyist, Union members, and legislative advocates need a resource mobile app that includes everything they’ll need to navigate the New York State Legislature.
Hypothesis
DESIGN PROCESS
Empathize
Competitive Analysis
User Research
Define
Personas
User Journey
Test
Clickable Prototype
Usability Testing
Design Iterations
Ideate
Site Map
User Flows
Design
Branding
Low - Fidelity
Hiigh-Fidelity
Phase One: Empathy
Research Goals:
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Determine where legislative advocates, lobbyist, union representatives, and staffers go to access information.
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Determine what's already in the market and the features offered.
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Identify the past and current painpoints for legislative advocates, lobbyist, union representatives, and staffers for go to information.
Methodology:
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1 on 1 User interviews
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Competitive Analysis
User Interview Results
I conducted user interviews virtually and ascertained vital insights about users experiences and pain points:
Participant Profile
7 Participants
Offices in Albany, NY and/or NYC
Using a tracking system or legislative stcak
Held a legislative role for 1 year or more
Interview Highlights
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3 participants worked for the Assembly, 2 for the Senate, 1 for a lobbying firm, and 1 for an advocacy firm
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6 had a subscription (Company provided) to the Legislative Retrieval System.
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1 created then own legislative stack consisting of various apps for news, and information.
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All mentioned the sources of news and information. 2 specifically stated they had personal friends who shared details before the news came out.
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All users spoke to the usability, or lack of usability from a mobile experience.
Competitive Analysis
BACKGROUND
StateWatch was created in the early 2000’s and has become a staple in New York State politics, for a wide variety of non legislative staff audiences. This audience includes lobbyist, state agencies, labor unions, trade unions and others. Statewatch labels itself as the premier legislative intelligence service.
Search - StateWatch’s search allows users automatic and manual searches by keywords, subject or authors along with other search criteria.
Tracking - Tracking with StateWatch allows users to organize their legislation in more than six ways. The tracking also allows for notification via email.
Reporting - StateWatch creates professional reports to support users and their workload. The offer report for bill status, meetings, calendars, research, analytics, and video scorecards.
CORE FEATURES
StateWatch does not provide any pricing on their website. However there have been reports of subscriptions starting at more than $100 per month. StateWatch also provides it’s services a la carte.
ACCESS
BACKGROUND
Founded in 1984 by the Legislative Bill Drafting Commission, LRS has two experiences one free and one paid. By law New York State Laws are required to be free and accessible to the public. This is accomplished through the free version of LRS. However, there is a paid enterprise version of LRS. LRS provides powerful bill tracking tools to support anyone tracking the New York State Legislature. The LRS mobile website mimics the desktop website and has issues with the responsiveness.
Search - LRS has a basic legislative bill search. A search can be queried by bill number, calendar number, resolution number, keyword search and several other search queries. LRS also has member and committee directory for each house.
Tracking & Alerts - LRS allows users to create customizable searches and alerts. LRS send users chamber notifications related to the Senate and Assembly. The alerts and notifications are accessible via email.
Reporting - LRS allows users to generate automated reports on a weekly basis. The system features the ability for users to track specific legislation within folders users can create in their tracking system.
CORE FEATURES
ACCESS
LRS features a free version with a basic web search. However the full access, including the features listed about cost $2,500 per Legislative Session or $209 per month/ per account.
BACKGROUND
Updated in 2015 with a price tag of approximately $525,000, the New York State Senate website is the official website of the New York State Senate. The update to the website broke the digital connection between the Senate and the State Assembly websites and create two separate experiences.
Search - The website offers the ability to search bills, resolutions, committee meeting agendas, session transcripts, session calendars, and public hearing transcripts.
Constitution Positions - Users can search for bills and can find the full text of the bill, the sponsor memo, committee history as well as voting records. If a user is signed in, they have the option to “vote” Aye or Nay on bill to express their support or opposition of the bill.
Educational Support - The website has a section that educates users on the legislative process specifically on how a bill becomes a law in New York State.
CORE FEATURES
The New York State Senate website is free and open to the public.
ACCESS
Phase Two: Define
Persona
Meet Eric, the politico
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User Journey
After missing two rally events with two separate unions and checking for news on four different websites Eric is considering adjusting his legislative stack to increase its dependability. He wants to have a successful legislative day at the Capitol.
SCENARIO
EXPECTATIONS
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Find a comprehensive list of events
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Streamline his news and alerts
Phase Three: Ideate
Scope:
A legislative resources app for the New York State Legislature where users can access foundational legislative information.
From my competitive analysis, I discovered what services and features are offered in the market. Based on my UX interviews, I also got a sense of what features users are looking for.
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Account Creation
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News Access
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Calendar of Events
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Legislative Bill Search
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Push Notifications
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Directories (Members & Committees)
I articulated 5 main features that will be required in the minimum viable product.
Site Map
From the main features I articulated, I created a sitemap with four main features placed in the navigation:
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Account Creation
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List of Latest News
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Calendar of Events
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Legislative Bill Search
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Push Notifications
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Directories (Memebers & Committees)
Once I successfully completed the user interviews and synthesized the data by way of a user journey map (which drastically helped synthesize the data and create insights), I turned to the user flows. These flows took into account the persona I created along with the feature list previously articulated. I utilized my time spent at the Capitol and in the Legislative Office Building to influence these seamless user flows.
User Flows
User Flow: View Calendar
User Flow: Share a news story
User Flow: Search for Bill
User Flow: View Notifications
User Flow: Sign Up
Click flow to enlarge.
User Flow: Share News Story
Click flow to enlarge.
User Flow: View Calendar & RSVP
Click flow to enlarge.
User Flow: Notifications
Click flow to enlarge.
Phase Four: Design
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
I created a mid-fidelity wireframe that focused that highlighted the main features I defined earlier in my research. When creating these I took into account the user journey and how the the newly created features could influence a more positive user experience.
Registration
Members
Committees
Newsstand
Weekly Calendar
Daily Calendar
Detailed Event
Daily Briefing
Legislative Search
Advanced Search
Legislative Details
Notifications
High-Fidelity Wireframes
After I successfully, created a component library, reviewed the compatitive analysis and drew inspiration for news, and other legislative resources, I created the high fidelity designs.
Create account
When creating their account, users access a customized legislative experience. I incorporated third party authentication that can support newer features in later versions of the app.
View Members
The members view serves as a directory and provides a comprehensive list of Senators and Assembly members. The members view features information about the member, their legislation, and a contact form embedded in the views.
View Committees
The committee view showcases a detailed view of Senate and Assembly legislative committees. The detailed view features the a list of meetings, and bills on their calendars.
Legislative Search
The legislative search gives users the ability to search bills as well as past and current resolutions. Users can bookmark bills, makinf sure they stay notified on all of the bills activity when it happens.
Phase Five: Usability Test
Testing
Usability Testing was an exciting experience since various stakeholders were excited to participate and see new innovations coming to the state legislature. The study provided great insights into improvement opportunities to the various features. Seven individuals participated and five prompts were created. The prompts reflected the established user flows and the features outlined. The results are below:
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Users had a 86% completion rate
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Four users highlighted improvements to the calendar feature(s)
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All users provided feedback and recommendation beyond the scope of the prompts
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All users asked how the app would access and collect information
Iterations
Before
There were several elements of feedback relating to the the detail view of the events. 3 out of 7 participants outlined various groups have events and they'd like to know who organized each event. 5 out of 7 participants commented or directly indicated they'd like to add events to their personal calendar.
After
Problem
Solution
I added a host section which featured the host name and contact details along with the number of attendees. To address the addition to the users personal calendar, I added a button icon located at the top right of the view port.
Before
After
Problem
Solution
I removed the anchors, and kept the fixed text navigation. Rather than jumping to various anchors on one screen, I created a segmented control that showcases the respective component.
Certain bills can have more than 200 pages, which would result in the users constantly scrolling. The initial solution utilized was a text navigation and anchors to jump to various components of the legislation view. This would still require a high amount of scrolling on a small viewport.
Before
After
Problem
Solutions
I included the ability to comment on various section of the legislation. Utilizing the anchor from the previous ideated solution above, I included anchor elements so the user can jump to the commented area.
6 out of 7 users indicated that a competitor included some form of annotation or note taking. The first version of the solution did not have the ability to annotate or take notes.
Final Results
The solution created is a comprehensive resource that can be used by legislative stakeholders, from novices to seasoned professionals. The developed minimum viable product (MVP) version of the solution was chosen as the official notification center of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus in 2018.
Impact of Solution
Next Steps
User Experience Design
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Conduct a second usability test to obtain feedback regarding the newly ideated features - specifically the ability to add comments.
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Create a user flow that allows users to share legislation, notes and comments in one location.
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Create a flow which allows users to indicate their support or opposition to a piece of legislation.
Business Development
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Incorporate the NYS Legislative API to gather information
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Work with development to determine the newly incorporated features and how they can be implemented
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Determine pricing structure, subscription, flat fee, etc.