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Writer's pictureKat Fenton

Senior Reviews

and beginning mockups


This Friday we had an important checkpoint in our capstone process, the dreaded Senior Review. During this review you present your capstone with a bit of background and basically the professors tell you how it sucks and if it will make it into the show. Except, this ended up being much more informal and much less intimidating than I expected.


Here’s some of the background I presented — Simple Politics is a tool to inform voters and help them feel more confident in their vote. It’s aimed at new to voting USA citizens with middle class and under privileged backgrounds. I specifically wanted to target the age groups of 18–30. I presented the use of a website to fix the problems of people potentially not having a phone or home computer, and as an easy way to consolidate and update a large amount of information. The primary concern my professors had was with the specificity of the audience. Their argument was that it should be open to all US voters as this was something they would use as well.


Another point they made was that they’d like the site to focus more greatly on the local elections since its hardest to find information about them and often people don’t spend the time looking. They aren’t as publicized as federal elections and therefore are often forgotten about until people look at the ballot. It’s an important fact that I will take into consideration when addressing my hierarchy.


Concerning the overall aesthetic, neither professor seemed to be overwhelmingly concerned with it. The only comment I got was that flat vectors and photography can work well together. There is no need to choose one or the other when a compromise can be made. They also believed it would be important to make sure my site was distinct and better than the league of women voters. My counter argument was that my site will feature information year round, not just during election time. This site also doesn’t have much in the way of external links. All information is consolidated in one easy to reach place. The only external links were to the candidates social media and personal websites.


So it’s progress time. I’ve begun to collect content and am realizing that it’s actually moderately challenging on a local level. Some candidates don’t even have pictures! It looks like I’m going to have to reach out to personally to some candidates for pictures. Finding information on the ballot issues has been surprisingly easier.



Some candidates also don’t have personal websites or are lacking in the social media department. This is a problem I’ll have to adjust my design to solve for. Other than that though, I’m excited to be moving forward. The next steps for me include fleshing out a prototype and creating an InVision. Once those are done, I plan to do user testing and finesse the design and content.

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