A product concept for turning a long, fragmented ballot-research process into a guided path through the choices that matter to each voter.
people interviewed by the team
said they researched their ballots
average time spent researching
the product’s provocative target
Down-ballot races, initiatives, judges, and local offices required voters to search across disconnected sources. Some people left choices blank; others spent between 30 minutes and three hours assembling enough context to decide.
Ballot Buddy connected a person to their precinct, helped them prioritize their interests, and organized competing perspectives around the decisions in front of them. The team’s shorthand was deliberately ambitious: move from three hours of research toward three minutes of useful orientation.
I led user-research and design work alongside teammates responsible for business, front-end and back-end engineering, machine learning, marketing, sales strategy, and legal concerns. The work connected voter evidence to the product proposition, interaction model, market story, and original pitch.
The concept extended beyond a voter guide. With explicit opt-in, it imagined connecting voters with legislators and interest groups, then synthesizing responses into more frequent and useful constituent insight. That business hypothesis was early and unvalidated, but it made the civic system surrounding the interface visible.
The enduring idea is not the three-minute promise. It is that civic information should begin with the decision a person faces, disclose the values behind recommendations, and reduce effort without pretending the choice is simple.OPEN THE ORIGINAL 24-SLIDE PITCH ↗