Political Engagement Among Young People

Chapter 1: Introduction:

Oxford dictionary selected ‘Youthquake’; the political awakening of young people, as the word of the year in 2017 [1]. Due to the sudden rise of interest, the predictions of election tolls expected higher turn-out in the younger population. However, according to the British Election Study, there was a 16% increase in the young voters (18-24) between 2015 and 2017 [2]. Although the 2017 election was the highest turnout since 1992, there is still a significant gap in comparison to the older voter with turnout of 70% [2]. Therefore, one can challenge the phenomena of ‘Youthquake’. Young people are the most vocal when it comes to politics [3], but turnout numbers indicate an underlying issue. The Times magazine described the millennials as “the me generation and produced the me me me generation, whose selfishness technology has only exacerbated” [4]. But other research show that young people’s lack of political participation is because they have “little trust or confidence in the political parties” [5]. There is no existing software dealing with these compelling issues. This report attempts to explore the hypothesis – ‘why young people are not motivated to vote’. Focusing on the first two stages of Define Thinking Process and Empathize and Define, the aim is to identify the needs of young voters that is neglected in the current political climate.

Chapter 2: Needfinding:

Interviews:

In order to get a better understanding of the problem and determine what the user needs would be, this study used interview as data collection method. The process involved conducting five interviews targeting young people in order to investigate the issue thoroughly and discover how they think and feel about the issue. Five of the interviews took place in a quite café, and the other was on skype, online platform. As pointed out by Matarazzo and Wiens (2017), there are three main types of interview style: structured, semi structured and unstructured. The semi-structured method was employed in attempt to have a focused discussion but also allow the conversation to sway from the guide to give interviewees the opportunity to freely express their thoughts. During the interview, the data collection process involved reverting back to the topic by asking questions like “so has veganism had an effect on your views on political issues?” As shown in the interview guides in the appendix, the approach was modified a few times by adding some more questions or rephrasing existing one to make them more comprehensive. Ideally, modifying the questions as well as asking new ones to align to participant’s responses allowed collection of more detailed information on personal perceptions, opinions, and feelings.

Questions structure and selection was done in a manner that allowed data gather to be satisfactory, convenient, and effective from both the interviewer and respondent perspective. As illustrated in the interview guide (Appendix 3), the questions were divided into three sections - general, personal and point of view questions. After the first two interviews, some of the questions were changed and altered others (refer to the appendix) to accommodate the participants’ view and responses. Although the theme of the questioning remained the same in each interview, this study followed a tailored questions to each respondent that relate to their background or occupation. For example, when interviewing a member of the politics society, the question asked was in the format of “how has your experience in the society shaped your outlook on politics?” This format allowed this study to extract individual information in order to assess the link between their experiences and mindset. In Learning from stranger’s book, Weiss explained the importance of asking question that extract the persons thoughts and feelings, like “How do statements such as ‘Millennials are the me generation’ make you feel?” and “Do you think your vote makes a difference?” As advised by the Stanford Design project guide, after every open question I followed up with a “why”, “could you tell me more about that”, “how does that make you feel” (where applicable) to draw out specific details. In essence, the approach did not only ensured gathering data but also delving deep into the respondents’ perspective and line of thoughts about the problems.

Chapter 3: Defining the problem:

Define is the second design thinking process stage which deals with all the data gathered in the Empathize stage by analysing the observations and synthesize them in accordance to the research identified problems and objectives [6]. In this stage, it is fundamental for the designer to come up with a problem statement that is meaningful and actionable [6]. Conversely, point of view are statement that reflect the user’s needs obtained during the interview stage. To determine what the user’s needs are, empathy maps created. From the findings, 16.6% of respondents have not voted and do not plan to vote in the future due to lack of representation/diversity in politics and they feel “politicians are not genuine”. The remaining 80% have voted/plan to vote again, and agree that there is lack of diversity and highlighted the lack of education surrounding politics in school, “we are not taught in schools about voting”. The key finding in these interviews were the lack of educational avenues available and lack of trust and representation in government.

From secondary and qualitative research, it is apparent that there is a need for innovative ways to engage young people in politics. As illustrated in the defining the problem section of this report, there are a number of ways this can be tackled using software. From the interviews users suggested that they would like to use interactive tools which highlight key manifestos. In 2017, the Guardian, ran an article online ‘Who should I vote for?’, comparing each parties manifesto on different topics such as Health care, Immigration, Housing, Foreign Defence, Brexit and many more. Below are a few evaluations conducted based on the usability of the interface (find image of interface in appendix).

Chapter 4: Design thinking process:

Design thinking process is an approach used to understand users, take another look at the problems, challenge assumptions taken, and come up with innovative answers to prototype [6]. According to the Stanford Design project guide, the empathize stage is needed to create “meaningful innovations” [7] in order to get a better understanding of the user by showing that the interviewer and research in general are deeply and genuinely involved in the participants’ opinions. Whilst being a designer it is essential to “engage and observe” [7] users because that is the best way to get insight of the person’s thoughts and feelings. When conducting the interviews, this study intended to “observe”, “engage” and “watch and listen” [7] to get a well-rounded testimony. By watching the body language of the interviewees, it was able to get an indication of their views on certain questions asked. For example, when asked ‘do you remember when you first voted?’ respondent replied “Yes, it was 2016 for the Brexit referendum [sigh]”. Because the respondent sighed, there was a followed up with a question, ‘could you walk me through how you felt before and after you voted?’ For more details please view the appendix 4 for interview notes. Due to the nature of this study, asking interviewees to demonstrate how they work or “complete a task” would not be necessary because it would have no influence on the data gathered.

Empathy maps:

Empathy map is a tool used by designers to get a greater insight to what the user’s needs are. It is an exercise where four sections are divided on a paper or whiteboard, labelled as say, do, think and feel. Then from the transcript of each interview, the researcher writes down everything the user says, ideas that represent their thoughts and feelings and what they do (past and present). As illustrated in figure 1 to 5, this study conducted five empathy maps, one for each interview. From the questions, the participants were asked and followed up by ‘why’ and ‘how’, which abled the use gathered data to formulate a multiple points of view.

POV:

The following points of view were generated:

Young people need their point of views to be heard because at the moment they feel invalidated by the older generation.

Young people need more education about politics and government at school because this will make them aware of how they can influence policy to suit their needs.

Young people need to understand the importance of voting because they would understand what’s at stake.

Young people need more diversity in the representation of politicians in parliament because they would feel someone understands their needs.

Young people need politicians to keep their promises made before election because it would give them confidence to vote for someone they could trust.

Young people need more outlets to be able to express their thoughts on certain political topics because they want to be heard.

Young people need reassurance the government because they feel they are the neglected generation.

How Might We (HMW):

After defining the point of views from the quantitative research, the ‘how might we’ questions were generated to “spark” [6] solutions ideas.

How might we encourage young people to vote?

How might we improve the relationship between young people and the older generations while giving them what they want?

How might we assure young people that they are not being ignored?

How might we build young people’s confidence that their vote is making a difference?

How might we incorporate voting in young people’s 18th birthday celebration?

How might we create safe space for young people to express themselves?

How might we inform young people more about how politics effects issues they are passionate about such climate change?

How might we encourage more diversity in parliament in order for young people to feel represented?

How might we give young people the ability to vote differently to avoid missing out on balloting?

How might we ensure the information young people have on party manifesto is accurate?

How might we make alternative voting method for young people, as they do not find the current one efficient?

How might we educate young people on historical political events?

Chapter 5: Evaluating existing solutions:

Heuristic evaluation is a method used to assess and find issues related to usability of a user interface design [8]. Prior to release of a software, it requires excessive usability evaluation that could be considerably expensive and time consuming [8]. The evaluation consists of ten usability heuristics ranging from visibility of system status, match between system and the real world to flexibility and efficiency of use [9].

Visibility and status:

This webpage does not satisfy the visibility and status criteria for reaching the younger demographic. The current information is based on the 2017 elections and there has been no update on changes or new policies made by parties. The research gathered from the interviews suggest that youngsters prefer interactive news feeds like blogs, where they can interact with authors and peers to exchange points of view oppose to this static article. The FANTASYFRONTBENCH, a website containing information on government senior officials (prime minister and secretaries) score low on visibility test, user control and freedom, recognition, and flexibility and efficiency due to the background, icon, buttons, and words colours, arrangement, and accessibility. Although the website, whoshouldyouvotefor, provides core questions to government involvement, it fails to offer clear background and educative information on functions of government and current events.

User control and freedom:

User control and freedom are functions, which allow users to undo, return, or exit if they have accidently clicked the wrong button. On this webpage, there are no clear exits or return links displayed. Users can accidently click on all the advertisement links shown in figure x.

Match between the system and the real world:

This is a way to ensure that the language used in the system is understandable and familiar to the targeted audience. The webpage is filled with important information but there is excessive use of abbreviations assuming the reader will understand. For example, GDP and DFID are likely not fully understood by youngsters but could be essential for them to understand an article that refers to them.

Flexibility and efficacy:

Information is distributed in small coloured cards throughout the webpage with the title just above it. Although the information is spilt into digestible sections, there handles for each topic allowing recurring users to “jump to” [10] topics they are concerned about for and make routine tasks more efficacy, whereas new users have the option of scrolling manually. In addition, whoshouldyouvotefor fails on user control and freedom as well as flexibility not accommodating to the inexperienced or unaware user. Lastly, the yourdemocracy, have a well-aligned background and icon colour enhancing visibility and access with relevant information clearly available but layout of the links brings accessibility and efficiency issues.

Reference

Matarazzo, J.D. and Wiens, A.N., 2017. The interview: Research on its anatomy and structure. Transaction Publishers.