Design the Beginning- Reading Response
In summary, Zhuo is saying that you have to design bearing in mind that most people who interact with whatever you design wonât have the perfect context or knowledge base that will allow them to use it and for you to succeed. You must take into account a marketing strategy, what screens/pages will look like when you donât have content to fill them, strategies for getting someone to use the design a second/third/nth time.Â
In regards to our service design I will answer the questions she laid out now:
Where and how will people first hear about your product or feature? Thankfully, a print and social media campaign has always been in the works. The goal is to create a non-intimidating, local presence that reminds people about voting. Seeing material distributed around town and promoted on platforms will help our audience begin to identify our branding, and thus recognize our voterâs guide when the time comes. Design issues that must be taken into account: -How will print materials be distributed? What permissions must be granted? Will someone have to be hired to post flyers? -Sustainability? Will this cause environmental harm? -Is print effective advertising these days?
What should people understand about your product at a glance, and is that compelling enough to convince them to go through the trouble of trying it out? At a glance, VIA provides reliable information on registration and ballot items. We make it easy to find the info youâre looking for, reducing the time youâll need to sift through sources and poorly designed sites.
What should peopleâs first-time experience through your product be, and how do you plan to demonstrate to them its value within the first minute? Of course it depends on what aspect of VIA youâre using, but the app should be simple and provide obvious paths to information. Everything should be readable and accessible. On startup, the app will prompt for location data and allow the user to input info necessary for voter registration. After that the information available on the app should be tailored to the user.
How will you build out the social graph, content inventory, marketplace, etc. if the success of your product is dependent on those things? This is definitely a project that cannot be a startup with 5 people working on it. There will need to be marketing teams, research/fact-checking teams, engineers and designers, an HR team to organize volunteers and staff on the ground and deal with legal permissions for property use. This service cannot just be launched. It must be kept up.Â
What would compel somebody to come back and use your product a second or third time? With reliable, condensed information, we aim to simplify the voting process. If we can make the design cleaner, the information clear of jargon, and create a reputation for truth and transparency through brand presence and consistency, our users will remember us and come back for each election cycle.
I feel like we have successfully designed for the beginning given that weâre allowed to make assumptions about the resources weâd have access to. If we were trying to launch this as 5 designers alone, this would absolutely not work on any plane of hell. We do not have the expertise to dissect and refine every memorandum, nor do we have the money or resources to have a large scale campaign. But those assumptions aside, we have a plan for how to make this work.









