Agora
Civics interactive learning app
OVERVIEW
Project Basics
Background
UX Master's Capstone project with 4 people including designers and researchers.
Role
UX Designer
Duration
13 weeks
What Is The Problem?
Young adults often lack the resources and foundational knowledge needed to navigate complex civic and political topics, leading to helplessness and disengagement.
Introducing Agora
Agora drives political confidence and curiosity through engaging and digestible forms of information designed for younger generations.
MAIN FEATURES
Users can go through an onboarding flow to create their accounts and get a short tutorial on the features of Agora.
Through short-form videos like those seen on Tik Tok or Instagram Reels, users get small and digestible snippets of information about civic and political topics.
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Topics can be filtered through the filter bar at the top of the screen.
Tik Tok/Reels Style Short Videos
User can scroll, browse articles and filter for particular topics similar to videos.
Each article is presented as a carousel for users to swipe and get a quick summary of the content.
If they want to read the full articles, they can do so by clicking on the button the bottom of each article post.
Short Articles
Onboarding
Learning Modules
Mini games serve as a complementary feature to learning modules.
Through different types of games, users can have some fun and test their knowledge on a variety of topics.
Mini-Games
Short modules on a variety of topics help facilitate the learning journey for users.
Through these modules, users can slowly build up their knowledge and familiarity of civics and politics.
Users can receive recommendations through their in-app activities.
Incentivizing Usage
Agora employs a “streak” and “activity ring” system to help incentivize users to go on the app daily.
Home screen widgets like this one and help created a more personalized and engaging experience for users.
RESEARCH
We Used a Mixed-Methods Approach
Survey
• 107 respondents
• 16 questions
• Gathering data on people's political engagement, trust, & learning preferences
Interviews
• 10 individual interviews
• 60 minutes long
• Exploring motivations, pain points, and feature expectations the platform
Using Methods Like Affinity Mapping To Identify Key Themes
There Are 4 Main Themes We Discovered
Big Confidence Gap
70% of respondents indicate that they don't feel knowledgable of civics or politics even when they might be engaging with political content often.
Social Media Distrust
91% of respondents indicate that they engage with and get most of their political information from social media. Yet only 12% actually trust the information.
Burnout & Polarization
People avoid engaging in politics due to fear of conflict. Information overload and complexity are also driving factors for disengagement.
Digestible Information
People's prefered ways of taking in information include short-form videos and podcasts. This shows a preference for passive, bite-size methods of learning.
NEXT STEPS
1
Exploring other research methods to further dissect the target population and discover new or support insights.
2
Consider different mechanisms including AI to manage and moderate how the credibility system works on the platform.
3
Current flows are more geared towards the "user" persona. The "creator" persona needs further exploration.