Ask Away

Ask New Zealand's political parties your questions this election.

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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!

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Adjusting the Algorithm

The algorithm controlling the order of the trending questions list was something that we knew we would need to adjust on the fly, once we could see the dynamics of new questions coming in and the rate at which things were answered.

We had a lot of questions come in over the weekend and the answers started coming in regularly from the following Tuesday. After a few days, the top five questions had at least three answers on each of them, which meant there was a lot of content for users to get through in that section. I could see that the people were still voting for those questions sitting on top, but then there was a big drop in votes below those five.

This meant that we needed to get the content turning over faster, with questions dropping down the list faster once they had been answered. That way, more people would vote for the next questions. We still want to get enough answers in the top twenty questions that people reach them, but figure that people will scroll through questions without answers a lot faster than those with.

We changed it today, and it has quite shaken up the trending list a lot, so I hope no one gets thrown off, and it ensures a better turnover of fresh content.

Something that still needs to be perfected is that questions get heavier over time, so some questions with higher votes and no answers yet are below newer questions with less votes, and this looks quite dramatic at the moment. We’ll see if this new weighting stabilises over the next few days, but it might need more tweaking. It’s fantastic having all the content to experiment with - there are over 300 questions on the site now!

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It has been an amazing first five days of Ask Away! Young Kiwi voters, the ‘centre of mass’ of our intended audience, have responded encouragingly. In fact, that’s an understatement. Through social media, it has been wonderful to get real-time candid responses, and for them to be overwhelmingly positive.

Our aim was to engage New Zealanders, especially youth, and to provoke them to engage in political thought. Ask Away aimed to facilitate electors in setting their own agenda, and to let them cut through personality politics to the things that matter to them. It is doing exactly that. Who would have thought religion in schools would feature in this year's election debate? 

Well done, and thanks to all involved so far, from our collaborative partners (especially Jon, part of the enspiral network), to those who have offered encouraging words or shared a link on Twitter. And thanks to New Zealand's politicians who have been wonderful adapting to engagement with democracy in 'real-time'. 

Keep asking-away!

Karl Kane is the Leader of the Design & Democracy Project.

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Launched!

It was a fantastic feeling getting Ask Away live on Friday, and it has been wonderful watching both people and the parties engaging with the site. We set ourselves a tight deadline and of course we have a lot more we’d like to do with the site, but the feedback has been very positive and in line with the things we have planned.

There have always been two questions critical to the success of Ask Away. The first is, will the politicians actually engage?

From today, the top question each day should be answered by all the parties, but I suspect it might take some of them a little while to get organised. Doing something new is always challenging, but hopefully we’re setting a precedent for how these things work in the future, and there are certainly a lot of good intentions!

The other thing that is going to help is seeing other parties active on the site - NZ First MP Tracey Martin went through last night and answered an amazing forty questions, showing everyone else how it’s done. I noticed people immediately encouraging the National party to keep up via Twitter.

Looking forward to @nznationalparty senior MP's answering soon on @AskAwayNZ. C'mon guys @TraceyMartinMP is making us look technophobic

— Joel Rowan (@RealJoelRowan)

August 10, 2014

I also enjoyed Tracey's way of answering, and would encourage spokespeople to use her conversational style, saying things like “Great question” or “As Chris said…”. We’re going to build in ‘likes’ for the answers so that we can see what people respond well to, but my hunch is that human, conversational answers will go down well.

@BMHayward @AskAwayNZ @suemoroney I am really loving this opportunity to answer questions - much better than speaking at people :)

— Tracey Martin (@TraceyMartinMP)

August 10, 2014

Of course, if that comes at the cost of a specific stance in the reply, I’d like to hope people will call it out, and, as journalist Megan Whelan said, “People like me are still going to be looking at the answers going - hold on, you didn’t really answer the question”. On that point, it will be very interesting to see how this content interacts with traditional forms of media.

The other, most important question is one which Matthew Beveridge raised in his blog post about the projects. “The real test will be if those who are not already politically engaged start to use them, or if they will just become tools for those who are already engaged”. So far, it’s likely that the majority of users are those who are already engaged, and that was always going to be the case to begin with.

However, with accessible questions like “Why is the cost of rent so high?” at number 5 on the trending list, I think this is going to be a good resource once there are a lot of answers on there to compare. Now that we have so many questions on the site, our marketing will change its messaging to be less about asking a question and more about the site as an easy way to compare the parties, specifically to target this less engaged audience.

At the very least, Ask Away is showing to anyone that visits it that the parties are interested and responding, and this impression will only increase as more answers come in each day.

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Designing the Algorithm

One of the main changes we’ve made to Ask Away this year is to introduce the ‘Trending’ view of the questions as the default homepage. There is a bit of thought that’s gone into this one.

Then, we factor in the value of answers. In a survey I did at the very beginning of the project last year, I found that people were far more likely to look at information (reading the news) than to take action (sharing a political Facebook post). Based on that, the first thing that first time, uninterested visitor to the site needs to see is answers from parties, because that’s where the site functions as a source of information rather than a way of participating. So, we might need the algorithm to boost up questions with answers, giving them staying power at the top of the page. The more answers, the more likely it is to be at the top of the page.

Trending questions in action

However, we want people to come back to Ask Away, and as a returning visitor, I want to see new content every time. So we add decay to the algorithm, and questions slowly move down the list over time. Now we have a way of delivering valuable, fresh content to both new and returning users. The good thing about decay on the questions is that it helps balance what we want with what users want. That unengaged first time visitor probably doesn’t want to contribute to the site, they just want to absorb the information. If it was all about them, we wouldn’t even show questions without answers in that first main list. However, we want users to vote for the questions, because votes are how we show the parties that people want their answers. So, questions rise to the top, get answered, and sink down again, meaning that valuable answer content is dispersed throughout that long list alongside new, unanswered questions.

Rowan’s definition of question ‘hotness’ in the code

The rate at which this all happens is important, because if we are too heavy handed with the controls, we’ll distort the basic logic that voting pushes questions up, and people won’t understand how the site works. It’s something that we can’t really test until we have a high volume of traffic on the site, and will need to adjust on the fly, so Rowan has built the algorithm with levers we can adjust once it’s up and going.

I’m also aware that this isn’t strictly unmediated presentation of content, and that because voting on the site is conceptually linked to democratic voting, it’s especially important that it feels fair for users, so that’s something I’ll be keeping a close eye on.

 If you'd like to have a look or contribute to the code, you can find it on Github here.

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Judy's question for the parties

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Introducing the Cats

As part of the user research workshops I’ve been running, I put together four personas to represent the range of attitudes young people have about voting. Using cats means I can avoid demographics, and focus on psychographics. Karl also suggested using Winnie the Pooh characters, which would have worked too.

Evangelist Cat

Engaged in issues outside of election time

Probably has a specific cause or issue they’re passionate about

Might be encouraging everyone to get involved

Is looking for tools to further their agenda

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabby_cat

Upstanding Cat

Will vote unless something gets in the way

Probably votes with family and friends

Might be aligned to a particular party based on family or peer’s values

Feels comfortable with the process of voting

Doesn’t usually follow politics but will read up around election time

Might not want to get into a very heated discussion around politics

Image credit: http://www.birmingham.cats.org.uk/birmingham/feature-pages

Uncertain Cat

Could be a first time voter - unfamiliar with the process

They might not decide whether or not to vote until late in the game

Will take opportunities not to vote (like other commitments)

Finds politics confusing and doesn’t want to look dumb

Might have a vague feeling that they ‘should’ vote

Will vote if someone asks them to or makes it easy

Image credit:  http://cocdoc.fpt.edu.vn/content/gioi-oi-mat-hung-roi-lam-sao-day

Uninterested Cat

Thinks politics are irrelevant

Doesn’t notice election or political news or advertising

Doesn’t think they have a role to play 

Doesn’t relate to politicians or the issues they talk about

Thinks politics is a boring topic

Using the cats as a discussion point has been a good way of checking my assumptions about my audience. The feedback I’ve had is that these personas are familiar, and accurately describe my research participants so far and the people they know. Interviewees recognised that people are often combinations of a couple of different cats, and that each have different needs and motivations when voting. They’ve been a helpful catalyst (sorry - couldn’t resist) for further conversation about how different people might use the site.

These were Fin’s thoughts on how to attract Uninterested Cats:

“Get the internet feminists, then you get the anti-internet feminists and then you’ll get a whole shitstorm, then you’ll get the Uninterested Cats coming to the party”.

Other participants thought the Uncertain Cat would want an overview of “what’s trending right now” so that they wouldn’t look uninformed - “it’s a top 40, if politics was a top 40”.

These four are not a complete set, I ask participants “Who is missing?”, and each group I’ve asked has had a different response, or has recognised different segments in one persona. The Cynical Cat (or “apathetic evangelist” according to one participant) is an active non-voter who doesn’t buy into the system, and the Evangelist Cat includes both political hacks and issues based activists.

My personas are informed by research commissioned by the Electoral Commission in 2007 that identified five segments of non-voters, 'Politically Absent', 'Living for the Weekend', 'Distrustful and Disillusioned', 'Tentative Triers' and 'Confident and Convinced'.

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Secret Level and the Importance of Language

Secret Level is a youth hangout space in Lower Hutt, with a music and dance practice space, a recording studio and radio station, free internet and pool. I went out there last week to ask some people about what issues are important to them, and to see how they’d group the different categories.

Using people centred taxonomies to categorise things is an idea I encountered at my internship with the Design and Innovation team at Internal Affairs. I printed cards with the fifty different ministries and spokespeople titles that I collected from the parties, and asked people to group them into five to twelve categories. This technique had worked well in previous workshops, but it didn’t work with these young people. Their body language changed when they looked at all the cards, they switched off, looked away and leant back. Seeing the words “State Owned Enterprises” triggers a strong “not for me” message in some people’s minds, and even though I knew this in theory, I had to see it in reality to get it.

I changed tack, and asked the hip hop group who had come in to practise what their top three most important topics would be. One said youth would only be interested in Food and Sports and Recreation, and I asked whether Arts, Culture and Heritage might be similar to Sports and Rec (since he was in a dance group). He said “Most of the arts wouldn’t be what’s under that, they’d be talking about art galleries...youth would be more into graffiti and tagging”. So, to state the obvious, if there was an “Arts, Culture and Heritage” category on Ask Away, it would send a message to these young people that it didn’t include them, or the things they are interested in. None of this is surprising, but ministries and spokespeople still have names like this to describe themselves, and that is clearly contributing to the disconnect between young people, politics and government.

Thanks to Simon and Serah for having me!

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Ask Away's first hack night of 2014 at Enspiral, thanks to everyone who came along!

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Rocking the Youth Vote

Last Friday, Karl, Tim and I excitedly attended a youth voter engagement workshop hosted by the Electoral Commission.  It was facilitated by Heather Smith of the US non-profit Rock the Vote, and she talked us through the variety of tactics they use to get young people to turn out in elections.

There were some key ideas which came through both in this workshop and in the Valuing Our Vote conference the day before. Many of these were familiar from behaviour change theory, but it was great to see how they had been put to use and proved in a real world context. Overall, there was an agreement that there is no single cause for turnout decline, so there is no silver bullet solution. However, Rock the Vote have a suite of tactics which have reliably had significant impact on turnout.

“Demystify the process” is the first rule on Heather’s 5 step plan to get kids voting. Something unknown seems a lot more difficult than something familiar, and visual aids like infographics can be very effective at making information accessible.

Her next point was to “make it relevant”. Promotional campaigns should allow people to see themselves in the system - so Rock the Vote use celebrities or just people who are relatable to their target audience in promotional images. I hope that by asking young people to engage through an issue they care about, Ask Away will contribute to making elections relevant in New Zealand. For Ask Away’s social media campaign, I’ll use a series of photos of people with their question for the parties. Some people seeing the photos might relate to the question being asked, and others might relate to the person asking the question. This creates the perception that “people like me are doing this” - a powerful motivator.

The third tactic is simple: ask youth to vote. Rock the Vote trains parties and candidates in the states about engaging youth, and they make it clear that it is worth mobilising youth because when asked, they are one of the most responsive segments of voters. Heather elaborated on this tactic by explaining how not only asking people to vote, but asking them when and where they will vote, makes them formulate a plan and significantly raises the effectiveness of the appeal.

Rock the Vote work to create a culture around voting, to spread the message that it is important, something to be proud of, and most importantly, cool. She says she votes “because voting gives me power, and power is sexy”. Social media is a great way to spread and make visible that culture, something the Design and Democracy Project are planning on utilising.

The final message was that message, the messenger and medium really matter when trying to reach youth. Repeatedly, speakers challenged the clumping of ‘youth’ into an amorphous, apathetic group. There is a huge range of engagement among young people, demonstrated by the high levels of youth attendees at both workshop and conference. In addition, we have a diverse spread of subcultures, worldviews and attitudes across New Zealand, and attempts to reach ‘youth’ must be carefully tailored to reach more defined groups.

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Why the Chalkboard?

The original reason for making the speech bubble chalkboard was that TVNZ’s Q+A were filming a segment on the “missing million” non-voters, and interviewing Marianne Elliot of Action Station. She wanted to include Ask Away in the segment, and we thought about ways we could make a physical representation of how the site works.

The Q+A segment on 'The Missing Million'.

Although not much of the chalkboard actually ended up on the Q+A segment, by happy accident it’s now the main part of my social media campaign. I realised that gathering as many pictures as possible from a diverse group of people would be a great way of making the campaign relatable. People could relate to either the question being asked, or the person asking the question. The aim is to give the message that “people like me are doing this”, as well as specifically giving examples of the things that people care about.

This exercise also provides an idea of what sort of questions people are likely to ask on the site, and I can use them to help inform the categories the questions get sorted into.

Several campaigns recently have have successfully used this format (getting people to handwrite their contribution and take a photo). I noticed the NZ Marriage Equality campaign and Generation Zero and 350 Degrees' 100% Possible campaign in 2012.

I made my custom chalkboard using the lazer and vinyl cutters in the Fab Lab and some chalkboard paint Oliver found for me in the spatial design studio. A quick Google revealed that wet wipes are the most effective way of cleaning off a chalkboard between uses, so armed with chalk, my board and wet wipes, I set off to gather people’s questions for the parties.

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Open Lab's Catherine, Kieran and Jo with their questions for the parties.