Feedback

Overall, the feedback has been very encouraging. There were some technical glitches around registering and login (always a turnoff), but other than that this preliminary round of feedback is going well. Some people were thoroughly confused at first about what I was up to, but then there was kind of an “okay, I see” moment and after that most people were intrigued and interested. Some are very skeptical which of course I LOVE. From the moment I started tinkering with this idea and seeking out feedback, I told people to tell my why this is a terrible idea- tear it down. Hurt me. It’s really necessary to get as much bad news as possible.  I think the biggest skepticism is that even though the idea has merit conceptually, and there is agreement that we (as a society) need more citizens to engage their critical thinking skills when it comes to electing the people who make important decisions for all of us (not least of which is how tax dollars are spent), getting people to make that change will be very difficult. I totally agree. I’m asking people to engage in new behaviors with no clear incentive to do so. At best, the “pay off” is delayed in time and remote from the user in space. Hardly tangible. So really, this is like a 10 out of 10 on the scale of behavior change difficulty. But that’s ok. It shouldn’t be easy and difficult is not impossible.

Some Feedback Specifics:

1. Add “About” to the menu bar on the home page to address “who?” and “why?” My blog post “About” doesn’t cut it.
2. Redo the “video walk-through”. Needs to be short (2 minutes) and motivating.
3. The “How It Works” feature may not be necessary.
4. Provide “candidate content” such as their policy positions, at the website.
5. Cut down on the number of “candidate attributes” voters are asked to rate.
6. Add an option to “login with Facebook/Google”
7. The high school curriculum angle seems to be the aspect that people are most bullish about. In terms of behavior change difficulty, the contingencies involved with changing high school student behavior in the context of a civics class  are light years easier to manage than the ones of the general voting (or nonvoting) public. So pursue this.

Next Steps:

1. Add “About” to the menu bar on the home page. I’ll probably rework the content from the “About” blog post and use it to populate the “About” link on the home page menu bar. I’m not entirely comfortable giving a lot more info about “who” I am, but I think the point is to assure potential users that this isn’t some project with a secret “agenda”. It’s not. I’ll work on that.
2. I’ll redo the video walk-through. I’ve done the first 2 takes on my own and I guess it shows. Since I’m financing this out of my own pocket (which is as deep as a puddle), I didn’t hire a professional to make a slick marketing video. Still not ready to do that. I’ll take another shot at doing it myself.
3. I’ll probably convert “How It Works” to a link to the video walk-through instead of the step-by-step text sequence that is there right now. This way a visitor to the website can just click on the “How It Works” link on the main page and the youtube video will pop up.
4. Candidate content. This is tricky. It’s very labor intensive to write objective content about candidates. I did recently send out a “Candidate Questionnaire” to all of the candidates in the primary races I’m currently tracking. We’ll see if any of them respond. I doubt it at this point since I have no “clout” and like 10 people have rated candidates. But if by some chance any of the candidates do respond to the questionnaire I’ll be sure to post that info.
5. Cut down the number of candidate attributes that voters rate from 8 to 6. I can’t make that change to the primaries that are currently being tracked on the website but I’ll make the change for the general elections in the fall.
6. Add an option to Register with a Facebook/Google account instead of having to create a new profile. This is in the works. Should be ready soon.
7. Set up advertising through Facebook. They reject my first bid to advertise because they consider the website political. So now I have to jump through some FB hoops in order for them to allow me to advertise. Hopefully, I’ll be able to meet all of their criteria and get targeted ads up and running in the next couple of weeks.  I’ll be curious to see what happens with that.
8. I’m reading up on potential grant partners. If I feel like this project is still worth pursuing after these primaries are over, I might look for some outside funding support to broaden the effort. We’ll see.
9. I’m looking into partnering with a high school or 2 to pilot mycandidatescorecard.org as a civics project. I’ll post more about that if/when I get it off the ground.