Design+Democracy

Enhancing participation and conversation on social issues through design.

[designdem]

Master of Design candidate, Thomas Le Bas, has held a consistent profile and discourse of his project in the mediascape surrounding the Flag Consideration Project over the past number of months. This recently culminated in the use of his work with Massey University’s Design & Democracy Project as an exemplar to Parliament by Green Party MP Gareth Hughes. Gareth had presented Thomas’ project, Flagpost, as an exemplar of modern and inclusive democratic engagement through digital design and technologies. This formed a central plank in his argument that saw the passing of his Bill to include Red Peak as a fifth flag option for the public to vote on. Flagpost was designed to challenge the flag selection process by allowing the public to feed their views back in a way that the Government tools did not, becoming a space for people to have their say on 10,000 New Zealand flag design submissions.

[designdem]

Flagpost on TV3′s Newsworthy

Covering the recently released final 4 flag designs that New Zealanders will get to vote on, Newsworthy briefly interviewed Thomas Le Bas about the selection, and Flagpost. View the video here—about a minute into it!

[designdem]

STUDENTS FLAG ISSUES OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

Stuff.co.nz got together some students together in Wellington, with our Thomas Le Bas in the mix.

Millenials - old enough to have an opinion and young enough to live most of their lives under a new flag (if it changes). We put a few students in a room to get their reactions to the four alternative flag designs unveiled by the Flag Consideration Panel on Tuesday. The result?

View the video and post here.

[designdem]

theglue.co.nz: Have your say with Flagpost

The folks over at The Glue wrote up a great piece about Thomas Le Bas and his work with Flagpost, and why it exists. You can check it out here!

[designdem]

Flagpost launches!

Our third initiative to come out of the Design & Democracy Project is that of Thomas Le Bas’ Master’s project: Flagpost.

Flagpost is a collaboration with Springload, the same web design and user experience agency that was used to develop On the Fence further for the 2014 General Elections.

The website is live at www.flagpost.nz

Below is an excerpt from the website outline it’s purpose and positioning in the flag consideration landscape.

What is Flagpost?

Flagpost offers Kiwis a place to reimagine the New Zealand flag, on their own terms, with their own voice. Your ideas and opinions matter. Through Flagpost you will help to find out what New Zealanders value and how that is best represented—after all, a flag should be for everyone. Flagpost is an interactive tool where you can explore through the flag submissions, then you can participate in the process of finding the best. Use tags to say what the flags mean to you, contribute feedback, post new ideas and vote for your preferred designs.

Why are we doing this?

This is a conversation about everyone and we believe that everyone should be a part of it. However, the shortlisted flag designs for the first referendum are being selected by a 12-person panel—a hiccup in democratic process. Despite the process being well-intentioned, we believe New Zealand’s voices should be the driving force behind the selection process. This is where Flagpost comes in.

What is missing is meaningful input from the public around the representation of what they value through flag design. Flagpost addresses this by enabling insights into what New Zealanders want represented in a flag, and how best to do that.

While Flagpost isn’t advocating the changing of the New Zealand flag, it is advocating informed decisions, empowering the voice of New Zealanders, and promoting impactful engagement with the flag consideration process.

[designdem]

#hometovote

Ireland could become the first country to legalise same-sex marriage through a referendum. More than 3 million people are eligible to vote, including 60,000 expats. Those who have left the country less than 18 months ago are able to vote in the referendum, but need to show up at a polling station in person.

Because of this voting limitation, overseas Irish citizens are bolstering support for the yes vote by flying home to go to the polls. The hashtag #hometovote has been showing the sharing of photographs and stories on social media. Twitter has been filled with pictures of people returning home to have their say on gay marriage, with some decorating their trains accordingly.

[designdem]

With just over a day left of voting, On the Fence has gotten some considerable attention from the media over its nomination for a 2015 Webby Award.

3 News and StopPress have both thrown the news out there and make a great point that New Zealand has quite a strong presence at the 2015 awards.

Design & Democracy and our partner Springload are indeed very proud to be up there with the best! If you still have a vote to cast, go give one here.

[designdem]

Spread the word! On the Fence is a finalist in the Webby Awards! Placed in the People’s Voice Political Website/Blog section the ‘Oscars’ of the web, it honours the best of the internet and we are proud to be amongst them. We are up against some major U.S. websites, including Politico and Factcheck.org.

We need as many supporters voting for On the Fence as possible! Please head to The Webby Awards and place that vote!

[designdem]

The Knight Foundation opened the call last month for another one of their News Challenges. For this challenge, they ask the question: how might we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections?

Naturally, the team here at Design & Democracy and our partner Springload were thrilled. We got to action straight away with a great workshop by the team, preparing our proposal for taking On the Fence to the USA in time for the 2016 Elections. This is an exciting opportunity to push On the Fence further and we look forward to the response!

Check out our entry here:  On the Fence: Helping young Americans to get started on their political journey

[designdem]

Dr Claire Robinson appears as guest on Radio New Zealand Media Watch to discuss On the Fence— ‘On the Fence is absolutely designed as a tool for young to people, to make them start possibly start to make a vote choice that wasn’t based on their parents. Look at what you believe in and then we’ll give you some sort of indication of who you might like to think of voting’

[designdem]

We are very happy to find On the Fence making a considerable impact on youth voters, and to have the research that shows it!

Poll confirms web tool encouraged youth to vote

“More than 10,000 young people aged between 18 and 34 were influenced to vote in last year’s general election by the efforts of an interactive web tool designed by Massey University graduates.

A Horizon Research survey of voting behaviour at last September’s election showed that On The Fence was the most effective initiative focused on increasing youth voter turnout.

The survey asked eligible voters whether they were aware of the Virgin Voter Collective campaign to raise youth voter participation, and which initiatives influenced their decision to vote.

The survey, which had a margin of error of three per cent, showed that 33.500 eligible voters aged 18-34 were aware of the Virgin Voter Collective campaign with 31.7 per cent of them (or 10,619) influenced to vote by On The Fence.”

[designdem]

Our friends at Springload wrote up a great overview of the collaboration between the them and Design & Democracy Project, to provide the new and improved version of On the Fence for the New Zealand 2014 General Elections.

Getting young voters off the fence

“We’ve taken care that our shared work environment has supported this project. We have hot-desked at each others’ offices, shared meals together and run design critiques with both our teams. It’s been extremely valuable working directly alongside the key decision makers, enabling us to work lean and ship something we’re all really proud of.” 

[designdemaa-blog]

[designdem]

Ask Away: Meg

I was invited to speak at LinuxConf 2015 which happened in Auckland a couple of weeks ago. It was a cool chance to talk about how using a human-centred design approach helped me understand both my users and stakeholders. The cat user personas went down especially well! Here’s the video - thanks for having me LCA!

[designdem]

Design & Democracy Project review of 2014 and the launch of two voter-based initiatives for the New Zealand General Election: On the Fence and Ask Away.

[designdem]

The Design & Democracy Project featured on this really interesting article by Radio New Zealand's Wireless team, discussing Ask Away, On The Fence and 21st Century citizenship. 

“When Elle Hunt and I were making a documentary for Radio New Zealand Insight (which you can listen to below) about the reasons young people don’t vote, we were struck by how many people said they didn’t feel there was enough information available to help them make a decision.

There are now dozens of different ways to find information, not to mention directly contact political parties and candidates. For all but a few of us, researching and assessing political views is easier than it has ever been before.” 

Listen here: Making an informed choice

[designdem]

2014 Minor Party Leaders Debate—

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/s2014-ep2-video-6073852

(48:03)  United Future party leader Petter Dunne describes On the Fence aiding voters by separating personalities and the ‘spectacle’ of politics from the focus on policies and issues.

[designdem]

2014 Suffrage Scholarship

In 2013, to celebrate 120 years of votes for women, our friends at the Electoral Commission established scholarships that cover fees for post-graduate research into voter participation.

For more information about the scholarship please visit http://www.universitiesnz.ac.nz/scholarships/suffrage

Students must:

— Be a New Zealand citizen or Permanent Resident

— For the year of tenure of the scholarship be enrolled as a full time student at a New Zealand university in an Honours of Master’s programme and be engaged for a substantive part of their enrolment in research which satisfies the purposes of the scholarship.

Go for it!