The Rundown is an online resource aimed at addressing the issue of low youth voter turnout in New Zealand, created in the lead-up to the 2017 General Election. I was the lead researcher and designer on the project, collaborating with developer Samuel Hunt. The Rundown was exhibited at Auckland University of Technology in June 2017.

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While studying at Auckland University of Technology, Samuel and I wanted to see how we could encourage more voter participation among our peers through a user-centred design initiative. To do this, we first spent time gaining a better understanding of the problem domain. We conducted research interviews with peers in the 18-24 target age group to unpack firsthand their feelings and thoughts around politics and voting. From this we gained two actionable insights:

1. Many have low voting confidence due to simply not knowing enough about the different parties and what they stand for.

2. Most would base their voting decision on parties’ stances on specific policy areas most relevant or meaningful to them.

Informed by these insights, we decided to create an accessible and shareable online resource which would allow visitors to easily cross-compare different political parties based on the policy areas we identified through peer surveys as being the most meaningful to our target audience. Our aim in doing so was to provide an engaging way to bridge the political knowledge gap. To make this possible, we reached out directly to all major NZ political parties with requests for concise, youth-relevant summaries of their position under each policy area.

The policy summaries we received were featured in the first iteration of The Rundown, which can be found live at therundown.nz. Because our target audience are highly socially engaged, we built in a social “Like” function so that visitors can show their support for specific policies, as well as a graphical breakdown of overall party support under each policy area. This was intended to encourage participation by helping visitors see where they are situated in the broader political conversation.

I additionally designed a set of print posters for the University exhibition, in a minimal but bold graphic style akin to that of The Rundown website and featuring different attention-grabbing slogans.