Rising Women Cross-Platform App
Rising Women is a cross-platform tool that helps women get started in politics. Globally, there is a large underrepresentation of women in political seats. Particularly in Nigeria, women occupy only about 6% of legislative seats. This app strives to help women learn about politics and join groups to help them through their journey.
Role
UX researcher, UX designer, UI designer
Client
Student Project for the Google UX Design Course
The Problem
The global share of women in national parliaments is 25.5%. For various reasons, women are highly underrepresented in public office. I was able to identify lack of education and financial incapacity as some of the most common issues.
Responsibilities
User research, wireframing, user interface design, low and high-fidelity prototyping, usability testing
Project Duration
July 2021 - July 2021
The Goal
To design an app to help educate women about politics and help connect them with politically oriented organizations.
Research
Secondary research was conducted by viewing articles and social media posts online. According to placng.org, out of 109 members in the Nigerian senate, only 7 are women. I found out that some of the many reasons why a lot of women don’t go into politics has to do with lack of education and the high cost of political campaigns. The pain points identified are as follows;
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A lot of women are not educated about politics or don’t understand how to get into it.
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Political campaigns cost a lot of money and women don’t have the financial capacity for it.
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Women believe politics is a “boys club” and sometimes don’t see it as something females also get into.
Personas were created to define each user group and help build empathy.
Problem Statement
Zainab is a university graduate who needs to find politically oriented organizations to support her political career because she’s not financially capable to do so on her own.
Problem Statement
Onome is a student who needs to find an easy way to learn more about politics because she will like to run for a political position in the future.
User Journey Map
A user journey map was created for the user flow of learning politics on the app.
Ideation
A competitive audit was conducted to identify the opportunities and gaps of the indirect competitors in the industry. These competitors were Coursera, Udemy, and Skillshare which are educational platforms. The goal was to compare the user experience of their app and website.
Some opportunities identified were to provide a way to read the course lesson or watch the video, a way to download the lesson, and provide the ability to continue from the same place in the course on all platforms.
Crazy 8's
The Crazy 8's ideation exercise was done carried out to get as many ideas as possible for the app.
"How Might We" Questions
"How might we" questions were developed to help in the ideation process. These questions were, "How might we create a way to make learning on the app accessible?", "How might we make learning fun?", "How might we make it easy for users to track their progress?", and "How might we make learning online feel like learning in person?".
Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototype
Iterations of each screen of the app were drafted on paper and elements that will be well-suited to address the user pain points were marked using an asterisk. This was done till the main wireframe which will be used in the digital wireframe was created.
Paper wireframes
After ideating and sketching paper wireframes, I developed digital wireframes for the app. These designs focused on enhancing the learning experience.
The Top Section has a progress bar to help users see their progress in each course.
The discussion forums provide a way for users to communicate with each other and discuss different topics.
To prepare for usability testing, I created a low-fidelity prototype that connected the user flow of learning the course lessons. View the Women In Politics App Low Fidelity Prototype
Usability Study Round 1
An unmoderated usability study was conducted on the low-fidelity prototype in round 1 of testing where 5 participants took part in the study, The goal of the research was to determine if users can complete the core tasks in the app. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) measured were Time on task, conversion rate, and System Usability Scale. An affinity diagram was used to organize the findings of the research. These are as follows,
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For most users, it’s difficult to understand the Groups page.
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People had difficulty deciding which group to choose.
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People felt that the play button was too small.
Mockups and High-Fidelity Prototype
Based on the insights from the usability studies, I applied design changes like showing the number of members in the group to help users make a decision. I also increased the size of the play button as this was a P0 (Priority 0) insight.
Before Usability Studies
After Usability Studies
Before Usability Studies
After Usability Studies
Menu Screens
The high-fidelity prototype followed the same user flow as the low-fidelity prototype, including design changes made after the usability study. View the Women In Politics App High Fidelity Prototype
Responsive Website
With the app designs completed, I started work on designing the responsive website. I used the sitemap to guide the organizational structure of each screen’s design to ensure a cohesive and consistent experience across devices.
Sitemap
Desktop Website Screens
Mobile Website Screens
The high-fidelity prototype of the website followed the same user flow as the app. View the Women In Politics Website High Fidelity Prototype
Accessibility considerations
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The colour palette passed the WCAG 2.0 for both AA and AAA.
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I used icons to help make navigation easier.
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I provided multiple ways to consume learning content
Takeaways and Next Steps
Users shared that the app served its purpose. It’s easy to use and beginner-friendly. They also said it's something they’ll use because they haven’t seen anything like this app before.
I learned that even though the problem I was trying to solve was a big one, diligently going through each step of the design process and aligning with specific user needs helped me come up with solutions that were both feasible and useful.
The next steps will be to conduct research on how successful the app is in reaching the goal of helping women learn more about politics, and to add more educational resources for users to learn about politics, and add more groups for users to join.
