Add More Officials

[supernova-at]

One of the biggest requests after release was the addition of more officials such as governors, and state and local representatives.

The UI will likely need an overhaul (navigation menu?) to accommodate the extra information.

[supernova-at]

Let's provide specific definition to this issue:

• Add State Governor
• Add State Senator
• Add State Representative

The final solution should take into account that more positions will likely be added over time.

[supernova-at]

Clarification needed: how many state senators / representatives are there for a given individual?

For example, at the federal level there are two state senators, and one congressman per district in the state. The requirements above assume that an individual is only represented in state government by one senator and one representative, but that may be incorrect.

[dallashudgens]

I'd also look into possibilities of other local government positions like Mayor, etc.

[dallashudgens]

I've got a couple different layout/navigation ideas. However I'd like to get a better idea of the content I should account for.

So there is the country level officials: senators for the state, and a house of representative for your district? Should we show a list of all the house reps for the state? (note: I'm so bad, idk how our politics is structured. Are there many house reps for the state?)

Then there is the local level mentioned above. How many state senators are there? (What's the difference between "the senate" and state senators? )

I'm also not sure how much is available via the API, but does it show their political Party? How many are there (Democrat, Republic, Liberal, Green, independent, etc).

As far as contact information, I saw in the app there is a phone number, snail mail address, and website. Do they have emails? social media accounts?

I'm going to work on some general wireframes in the meantime.

[dallashudgens]

My next step will be to come up with more device proportional digital wireframes. Then I can start working on colors and icons.

[dallashudgens]

I'm showing 3 different layout options. These icons are just place holders. I also need to make the icons smaller, but I made them the size of the smallest px hit box for mobile.
ourUSAwireframes.pdf

[supernova-at]

country level officials: senators for the state, and a house of representative for your district

Correct.

Should we show a list of all the house reps for the state?

I had to think about this one for a second, but ultimately I want the app to be less of a reference and more of a "I want to contact my rep now" (do one thing and do it well). Therefore, I don't think that this would be valuable. When you do call your rep's office, they take down your name and address so while you could theoretically call reps that aren't your own, they would know that you don't vote in their re-election, and so probably wouldn't put much weight in your viewpoint.

How many state senators are there?

State senators serve in the state legislature, while U.S. senators make up one
chamber of Congress (the Senate). Judging by http://bit.ly/2iJrkQk, it looks like Texans have one state house rep, and one state senator. I don't know if that varies by state or not though.

how much is available via the API, but does it show their political Party?

Here's the API doc on the query we use: https://developers.google.com/civic-information/docs/v2/representatives/representativeInfoByAddress. To answer your question, yes, the political party is included. Here are the other fields that make up the result:

{
      "name": string,
      "address": [
        {
          "locationName": string,
          "line1": string,
          "line2": string,
          "line3": string,
          "city": string,
          "state": string,
          "zip": string
        }
      ],
      "party": string,
      "phones": [
        string
      ],
      "urls": [
        string
      ],
      "photoUrl": string,
      "emails": [
        string
      ],
      "channels": [
        {
          "type": string,
          "id": string
        }
      ]
    }

That said, I purposefully didn't add their political parties because I was trying very hard to make this a non-partisan tool. Not that showing their party would make the app biased one way or another, but I just didn't want to bias folks one way or another. I guess I just wanted to make the reps feel like regular folks that you would just call, instead of some super official sounding position that might intimidate users away from calling.

Obviously my ideas on this are not fully fleshed out haha, I could probably be convinced otherwise 😝 .

Do they have emails? social media accounts?

I think they may or may not have this information, yes. In other words, they are supported in the response but an individual rep may or may not have a Youtube channel (for example).

[supernova-at]

Re: Initial drawings:

• I think I like the party affiliation icon overlaying the photo better than a textual representation. Maybe the full textual representation can go on the "more info" page (if that page still exists, and if we even include party affiliation at all).
• I think I like the endless scroll instead of the tabs. Just feels more modern.
• I like the icons that represent contact methods. Since that is the primary function of the app, we may even want to give them more real estate.
• I love "Connect to service that writes digital letters". I definitely thought of that too and I think that would be awesome.

[supernova-at]

Re: wireframes:

• The third one is my favorite 😃
• I like the displaying of the congressional district on the second one
• My preference for the endless scroll instead of tabs is confirmed
• Love the prominence of the contact buttons

[dallashudgens]

Totally understand and appreciate the "showing representatives of your area" for action.

We can keep the party affiliation off the main screens. I like your thinking behind them being represented in a non-partisan fashion. Maybe we could add it to the details page instead?

Also - gotcha on the social accounts. I'm not sure what people would find useful, but I figured twitter is an easy one for people to follow their candidates.

This also made me think of another idea - phone is the prefered contact method right? or the most effective? Maybe we can highlight that or have some verbage around it.

[dallashudgens]

Haha - I agree that the endless scroll is my favorite as well.
Is congressional district data we can pull? I just thought that might be a good piece of information for people to be aware of. AKA I have no idea what mine is 🙈

[supernova-at]

I figured twitter is an easy one for people to follow their candidates.

Yeah, agreed.

This also made me think of another idea - phone is the prefered contact method right? or the most effective? Maybe we can highlight that or have some verbage around it.

Yeah, definitely. I read that one article that was floating around about phone being the most effective contact method, so I think emphasizing that is a great idea.

Is congressional district data we can pull?

Uhhhhh .... good call lol we may not have that info.