CJ1
INCREASING YOUTH ENGAGEMENT IN POLITICS
Sanjan Sabherwal w10003260
In 2015 Britain will hold its first ‘social media election’, which signifies a great change in the way political parties communicate with the electorate. Today people control the media they consume meaning political parties and activists can no longer rely on broadcast media to get their message heard. Instead they have to develop new ways of engaging with the public – and social media platforms have become their battleground.
Introduction
CONTENTS
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Contacts
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Project Plan
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Dissertation
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Offline Engagement
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Digital Engagement
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Experimentation/ The Daily Rubbish
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Student Union Election
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CannyFeed
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Interactive Installation
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What’s Next?
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Introduction
CONTACTS Numerous collaborators have been involved in the project: Laura Warwick - laura.e.warwick@northumbria.ac.uk Doug Hunter - 07894 059605 Mike Potter - mike.potter@northumbria.ac.uk Mark Law - mark@buuuk.com George Prest - george.prest@rga.com Dawn Fisher - dawn.fisher@northumbria.ac.uk James Thomas - james.e.thomas@northumbria.ac.uk
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Can visual communication increase political engagement?
How can you engage young people online and offline today?
DISSERTATION
Putting principles into practice, can I increase peoples engagement locally?
EXPLORATION
Visual communication increases both public engagement with politics and a party’s engagement with the public
EXPLORATION
Defined the principles of engagement
Validated insights via primary research experiments
Introduction
PROJECT PLAN CJ1
What will my final deliverable be and how will it work?
Design and produce the interactive installation and supporting service
FINAL MAJOR
Could the interactive engagement tool be integrated into Northumbria’s Stand at New Designers?
FINAL MAJOR
Combine the interactive elements of digital media and physical space to engage young people in political issues and build a relationship
NEW DESIGNERS
Working interactive prototype
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DISSERTATION Visual communication has long been a key feature of political campaigns. But, while media consumption is skyrocketing, overall political engagement is in decline. This poses the question – Are visual communications still an effective way of increasing political engagement? This was an essential question, which needed answering to know whether embarking on a design project concerned with increasing political engagement was justifiable for the Final Major Project.
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Dissertation
CONCLUSION There is no doubt therefore, that visual communication increases both public engagement with politics and party’s engagement with the public. The Dissertation compared election campaign communications across three of the most significant elections in the last 50 years. It looked at the social, political and economic context of each election campaign and analysed the visual communications produced as a result. The work revealed the extent of research conducted by political parties to most effectively advertise themselves using traditional and, in the last chapter, social media. The positive conclusion gave the ‘go-ahead’ to explore new avenues for political communications. With the UK’s first ‘Social Media Election’ coming up in 2015 and political campaigning already underway, examining the ways political engagement could be sustained or increased would be a timely project.
With this in mind I needed to find a way of giving the project an edge.
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OFFLINE ENGAGEMENT Comparing and contrasting a variety of social spaces to understand how to get strangers talking and create a feeling of community - to assess how design could increase discussion and debate offline. Bethshan Church Observing and then assessing a contemporary Sunday Service to identify the ways the Church keep the congregation engaged over a two hour period.
Speed Dating Observing and then deconstructing a Student Speed Dating fundraiser to understand whether design prompts could play a role in making strangers fall in love
Quilliam Brothers Tearooms Interviewing Sam Quilliam revealed some of the reasons for the enterprises success.
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Offline Engagement
LEARNINGS SUMMARY
Being culturally relevant to your target audience is crucial if you wish to engage them The affordances of interior design constrain the opportunities for interaction between people. Belonging to a group is reassuring to people and enables them to do something out of the comfort zone. A positive and humorous tone breaks the ice and engages people - ensuring they come back, time after time.
Where Next? The Speed Dating revealed that young people were the most difficult to engage with offline. Young people are also the demographic least likely to vote in the UK. The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that during the British local election in 2013, an estimated 32% of 18- to 24-year-olds voted, compared with 72% of those aged over 65.
Could I find a new way to reduce youth apathy by combining offline and digital engagement tools?
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DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT Comparing and contrasting a variety of social media platforms and youth centred content to find out the key principles of engaging young people in political discussion and debate. BBC Three’s Free Speech Free Speech was used as a youth engagement case study chosen because it had the same ambition as my exploration project. The BBC’s holistic campaign combined educational live debates, social media polling, educational packs in schools and debate prompting videos.
The BBC’s decision to axe BBC three is a clear sign that they are giving up on engaging the youth on mainsteam media. Is that an indicator that Free Speech failed?
Live polling meant there was a direct connection between panellists and the audience. The feedback loop demonstrated that young peoples voices were being heard, in real time.
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DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT Snapchat Its success has called into question current social media, “What if social media, in all its varieties, was differently oriented to time by promoting temporariness by design?� As disposable content becomes the norm, how do political communicators ensure that their message is not forgotten?
Real-Time Content Learning about real time content was important to the development of the project because it could be easily applied to increasing the visibility of political issues.
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Digital Engagement Political content is increasing in frequency... Does Destiny Milliband make you think twice about the strength of the Labour leader? As BuzzFeed is an advertising platform perhaps it too has been used to spread some more guerrilla political messages....
BUZZFEED Infotainment news and advertising articles from Buzzfeed are ceaselessly shared on young peoples Facebook feeds. What is the appeal? A brief content analysis revealed that BuzzFeed’s secret to success is their tone and their repetition. Rather than providing an amusing image, BuzzFeed will provide 15 and make sure the figure is included in the title. The promise of lots of great content is too much to resist. Users are always scrolling to see the next image and caption. Many of their most shared items have pop cultural imagery. They even have a ‘rewind’ section on the website which is full of 90’s nostalgia indicating that their target audience is young people. And nostalgia really works.
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Digital Engagement
BERG Interaction design consultancy Berg have been exploring the way ambient technology can be used to create a more engaging environment in and out of the home. Could their ideas inform my direction? Looking at ways of inserting real time news content and discussion prompts into the physical world, BERG’s approach of integrating relevant information into preexisting formats was very inspiring. They added content to current touch-points e.g. News headlines on shopping receipts or tourist information on rail tickets.
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Digital Engagement
LEARNINGS SUMMARY Cleverly combining online and offline media, and interactive features makes issues accessible and available to a larger audience.
George Prest
Reiterating a message makes it memorable and fun.
Hi
Could surprising offline interactions civically engage young people?
That all looks good. The most effective way to engage people and change their behaviour is to show how other people have got involved and benefited. Information is key as is a low ‘barrier to entry’ and relevance. Hope it helps. G
Nostalgic content engages the youth because it is personal to them. Balancing humorous and informative posts to try and get people interested in politics. Delightfully integrate information into habitual activities to bring information to people Layering information with increasing complexity makes it accessible without being over simplified
Where Next? How can we apply techniques of digital engagement offline?
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EXPERIMENTATION Having understood the most effective ways of engaging young people, and inspired by the disruptive interaction concepts of Berg I wanted to test whether combining humour, social media, disruptive design and data collection could increase political engagement among students. I chose to experiment on the University Campus because it was easily accessible and permission to do something disruptive would be granted easier. The Law and Business School cafeteria is often busy, meaning that any work would be interacted with and its proximity to the design school allowed me to work on the presentation of the exploration in parallel.
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Experimentation
CAFE IDEATION SESSION What kind of disruptive polling could I experiment with in a Cafe environment? To gain permission to conduct some small experiments I discussed the project with Dawn Fisher, the Cafeteria manager in the Business School. We went through each touch point in the Cafe and identified what could be modified. Hygienic considerations meant that stirrers, cutlery and napkins were out of scope. The polling would work best if people had no choice but to vote. Therefore a polling bin would be ideal: no hygiene concerns (apart from my own) and something everyone would use.
Key Concern How could I measure opinions? How could I measure engagement when not on site?
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The Daily Rubbish The Daily Rubbish The Dail y ubbish R The Daily Rubbish The Daily Rubbish The Daily Rubbish The Daily Rubbish
The Daily Rubbish
Experimentation
To ensure people immediately understood the purpose of the bin modification, I chose a traditional Gothic font, stereotypically found on Newspapers. This was used black on white on the bin itself.
THE DAILY RUBBISH
For the bins twitter page, I placed the Title on a gradient background inspired by iOS7 which contrasted the traditional with the modern, the online and the offline.
Branding the Daily Rubbish made the experiment more official.
To make updating the bin’s daily more efficient I create templates to drop text and images into.
How could the idea be communicated most efficiently?
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The first post deliberately chose to focus on a campaign which had just been backed by Russell Brand and was gaining lots of publicity. Within minutes, the @NoMorePage3 campaign replied and was interested in the poll. Real time content was effective.
The Daily Rubbish
MEASURING ENGAGEMENT Would Northumbria University’s Business and Law student’s engagement in political issues be increased by a disruptive dustbin? In order to measure peoples opinions, the bin was modified, internally split using black card and contained two bin liners - one fore each slot. Once full, the bin liners would be weighed using a digital scale and measured in grams. The results were added to the twitter feed that evening and published on the bin the following day. To provide an added layer of information, a twitter page was setup. Each day, the twitter feed would post articles addressing both sides of the question posed on the bin. The retrofitted board asked people to Tweet @TheDailyRubbish as a way of measuring engagement and increasing online discussion.
Which argument had the most weight?
Key Concern While data can give us some indication of engagement, I needed to observe the way the Daily Rubbish was being interacted with.
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When placed on the bin, the twitter information and results section were not very visible.
On the second day, I improvised the existing template, and stuck the results and twitter link at the top, but it had fallen apart by mid-day.
The Daily Rubbish
TRIAL AND ERROR Observing the way people were interacting with the bin, and asking people in the Cafe about the experiment informed the adjustments made to the way the story was presented over the three posts. Anurag Singhi - a business masters student commented that the headline was hard to read from a distance and could be made clearer. He also thought the options could be more distinct. His suggestions are directly reflected in the final board.
After a template adjustment and addition support added to the back of the bin, the board was sturdy and the results visible.
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Jasmine Morris Your work is very interesting! Good way of encouraging people to get involved. You are still welcome to come to NDC next week and talk to our group about the project. We also have lots of research material that I can give you.
The Daily Rubbish
RESULTS & REFLECTION The first polling question was released on a Friday, one of the quietest days of the week in the building and therefore it was hard to conclude whether the first poll was accurate. Therefore, the same question was asked on the following Monday. The results were reversed and the total weight of results more than doubled. Questions two and three received even larger amounts of feedback. This increase is likely down to the increased footfall of the cafeteria and not people becoming accustomed to the bin. This shows that the bin was interacted with as part of peoples habitual actions. However, as there was not control measure of weight, it is impossible to say whether the bin was avoided and another used instead. Whilst observing the bin over an hour period, the majority of people threw away rubbish without reading the content because they were in too much of a hurry. Interestingly, people in groups were the only ones to feel comfortable discussing the content. Something highlighted by George Prest as a key barrier to entry. Finally, the results being weight in grams meant that the they did not reflect the quantities of votes caste.
Next Time I would make sure there were no other bins in the vicinity and although wight was a playful measure in future I would measure vote frequency by videoing the bin.
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Experimentation
MDI IDEA EXCHANGE The Multidisciplinary Innovation masters students had recently worked on a project concerning youth engagement so I took up Jasmine’s offer to compare project insights and to check the validity of my direction. One team combined polling data and voting into an application which served as a convenient feedback tool for voter and political party. The principle is digital version of the Daily Rubbish and the direction seemed the most practical and engaging produced by the MDI teams. Their findings were reassuring as they validated the principles of engagement developed during the exploration project.
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Laura Warwick I think the communication let you down...
Experimentation
PRESENTATION SCROLL How could you bridge the gap between digital and physical interaction methods to make information more engaging? Presenting the exploration project on a physical scroll meant the lecturers had to work harder to move to the next section - the idea was to increase the amount of time spent on each written section to ensure the information was read and the process enjoyed. The scroll did have it’s limitations which negatively affected the project’s communication. Laura mentioned that the cards were just repeating the same content that was on the scroll. I never visually explained that the two were meant to be read in parallel which may have caused this confusion. Secondly, PDF’s are limited in the physical size. The scroll could not exceed 200 inches in either plane. This resulted in a reduction of content on the scroll and therefore the quantity of work show was minimised.
Next Time I would add something to keep the paper aligned as the scroll was rotated. I would also plan in more time for things to go wrong!
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Me Doug Hunter podcast talk to me.
STUDENT UNION ELECTION An opportunity arose to run a presidential election campaign for Doug Hunter a fellow Design for Industry student. This was a chance to put the insights gathered during the exploration into youth engagement into practice.
Doug Hunter Wow. Interesting.
Could be something to take forward too... I know the Uni are trying to get radio going... but I think a weekly podcast would be better. Yeah man. A weekly update on union news, music, sports, local events etc.
The Campaign Handbook Northumbria Students Union had strict rules regarding student election campaigns. All campaigning could only be conducted over a 4 day period which reduced the scope for experimenting with communications and building a relationship. With a paid job in the balance, I didn’t want to jeopardise Doug’s chances for the sake of an experiment but, in the end Doug chose not to run for President.
You got it son.
Pres-cast!
What Next? While I could no longer campaign for a specific candidate, the opportunity introduced me to the idea of exploring student communications and how engaging they are...
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Student Union Election
CONTENT ANALYSIS How effective was Northumbria Student Union’s social media content at engaging their audience? Analysing the amount of interactions NSU’s Facebook posts received revealed that the content was not very salient. The official tone was cold, especially compared with the Northumbria Memes page. So much more could be done by the Communications Officer to increase the overall engagement and participation of students.
What Next? I saw an opportunity to work with the Union to improve their content.
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Student Union Election
COMMUNICATIONS AND DEMOCRACY In order to better understand Northumbria Students Union’s communication practices, I interviewed Mike Potter, the current sabbatical officer in-charge of communications. Talking to Sabbatical officer revealed just how difficult it was to push new ideas directly through the Students Union. The bureaucracy meant a direct political engagement collaboration with the SU, prior to the annual election in March was impossible. Furthermore, Mike and the team had already finalised most of the material which would be used to publicise the election leaving no opportunity for collaboration. During the discussion with Mike I learnt there was no platform for mediating communications between SU and students. No independent student paper to share opinion or promote events.... I learnt that only 2000 students had voted in the previous Student Union elections. The online voting system at Northumbria meant frequency was easily measurable. This lead me to reassess my ambition.
What Next? What if I could measurable increase youth engagement during in the upcoming election?
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CANNYFEED How could creating a third party, hyper-local promotional feed measurably increase student engagement with Northumbria’s Student Union?
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Me The can image was a bit too tongue in cheek but did lend itself to a local communication icon...
The handwritten fonts were too childish and the comic book ones unsophisticated and hard to read. Italics emphasises the local nature of the brand.
CANNY- FEED
CannyFeed CANNY FEED
CannyFeed
CannyFeed CannyFeed
Canny:Feed
I chose orange because of its vibrance. Also using red would make the brand just a BuzzFeed parody.
CannyFeed I ensured the branding worked in a square format, so it was clearly visible as a thumbnail on social media.
BRAND DEVELOPMENT Drawing inspiration from websites like the CannyFeed branding needed to communicate the ideas of authenticity, authority, humour and information.
Canny Canny Canny Canny
Canny
Canny Canny Canny Canny
Canny
Canny
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Me I didn’t even ask you to like Cannyfeed! That has made my day. haha
Rachel Breen haha! is it your page?
perhaps.I’d like to remain anonymous. what are your thoughts though?
it looks awesome! hence the like :)
CannyFeed
CONTENT PUBLICATION CannyFeed went live over a two week period. The aim was to publish daily posts promoting events in and around the campus. Content was usually taken from real time posts by local pages such as the Newcastle Chronicle or Northumbria Students Union and rehashed to make it more appealing. Initially I used my network of friends to increase CannyFeed’s visibility on Facebook but, after the two week period 1/3 of the page Likes were people I didn’t know. This proved that young people were interested in the local infotainment/ meme inspired page and were willing to engage with Student Union activities.
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CannyFeed
OFFLINE PROMOTION Distributing new leaflet archetypes at an Open Mic Night to increase CannyFeed’s audience. ‘W’ The unconventional format was playful and many people fiddled with the leaflet. But, the folded form meant the flyers were easily destroyed.... The thinner paper didn’t help. On the other hand, the information would have been consumed prior or during the process. “BERG Inspired Receipt” This small, receipt shaped article was titled: “5 ways to bring up Laura Marling at any acoustic night” The intention was to convey the values of CannyFeed to those who visited the open mic night. The aim was to create a relevant piece of infotainment, to prompt conversations and general interest. I observed many people reading the slips and asked several people what they thought of the content. People said they found it fun but that they still felt they didn’t really understand what CannyFeed was.
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In an attempt to increase the page’s audience I paid to promote the post concerning student loans but, facebook blocked the ad...Next time I will check the text % prior to submitting a post.
Too much text and too complex an idea but it was important to populate the feed prior to inviting people to join the page.
The playfulness of this could easily be seen as insulting to some of the acts performing
CannyFeed Using Nostalgic imagery to promote an invite to discuss the future of student loan payments.
CONTENT PUBLICATION
Adding a CannyFeed badge meant the name was reiterated when shared.
Each post was an iteration of content and tone. Viewing Facebook insights informed me of the most appealing content which affected the next post.
Shared posts from the SU were not as engaged with as ones with the CannyFeed tone.
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I changed the caption front to Impact Bold replicating the Meme aesthetic, and where appropriate used classic Meme images to make the content easily identifiable
The constant iterating meant the content lacked consistency.
Unlike the Daily Rubbish, publishing real time content instead of polls meant each post took more time. Trying to find the right balance of comedy and story was challenging and often not relevant for the target audience.
CannyFeed
CONCLUSION There is a real need for a hyper-local news source like CannyFeed at Northumbria Students Union however, the experiment was not going far enough, fast enough to increase overall political engagement and was leaving the scope of design and becoming a marketing and advertising project. Further, the page was only likely to attract people already engaged with the Student Union.
The final CannyFeed post I created publicised the Musical Teatre Soc’s production BARE. It was posted on the day the show opened and was shared and liked by members of the cast.
What’s Next? The branding, tone and accessible content of CannyFeed was effective. How could those idea be placed in front of a larger audience?
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INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION The next phase of the project looked at taking the principles of disruptive polling explored by the Daily Rubbish and the hyper-local content from CannyFeed into a more public realm to maximise the diversity of feedback and increase overall visibility. AMBITION To create a national campaign to increase overall youth engagement in politics by placing interactive installations in cities across the UK.
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Interactive Installation
JONATHAN HARRIS
The artist’s work explores the relationships between humans and technology. His interactive artwork “I Want You To Want Me” (2008) took data from dating websites and visualised it for people to explore. The dynamic and beautiful infographic is attention grabbing and the home screen featured the words “touch me”. He creates a very natural interface. The human tone is welcoming the computer looks to be full of life and not circuitry. With political news and rhetoric intimidating and disparate, creating a public infographic installation could be used to break down the divide between young people and political issues. Delightful and informative, with layers of information to explore such a communication could make politics visible in day to day settings.
Key Insight Creating layers of information of increasing complexity can allow passers by to engage at a glance and those interested to find out more.
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Interactive Installation
THE TREE OF LIFE
In his book Visualising Complexity Manuel Lima begins with the most iconic of symbols: The Tree. The book explains how the tree has forever been something humans have looked upon with awe. It’s metaphor has long been used to visualise complex systems. Today, through such repetitive use, the tree icon has become mythological. Just as Jonathan Harris artistically brought life to digital romance, could this tree begin to regrow political engagement within communities?
What Next? Finalising a design direction.
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Increasing political engagement amongst young people through an offline and online campaign. Content and Data Data from online and offline student civic engagement activities such as elections and society movements.
The Daily Rubbish was a disruptive design experiment which prompted people to make a political decision during an everyday activity. The polling results were then measured (in grams of rubbish) and then published the following day on the bin and on a twitter feed. Check it out at https://twitter.com/TheDailyRubbish
Beautifully visualised
An interactive digital artwork is used as a feedback mechanism which acts as a barometer of local engagement. It aims to put civic engagement at the centre of student life and increase awareness of hyperlocal political activity.
Made Accessible An application allows interested individuals to look closer at the real time data. An app could also be used to control which data set is displayed by the interactive art work.
I Aim to measurably increase students civic engagement at Northumbria University and then take those findings and see how they could be implemented in a regional or national form to reduce young peoples apathy towards government come the 2015 general election.
Interactive Sculpture
That should really say ‘what if it wasn’t a real tree but a digital tree?’
Mark Law It could be a great way to engage young people and visualise complex issues for easy consumption. An app in this scenario is the ideal platform, young people feel very comfortable interacting and using their phones and tablets because of the personal attachment they have. Its also very easy to connect people that way through social platforms. Apple’s release and latest developments of iBeacon instantly come to mind with something like this. A bit of research on the platform may shed some light on whether its useful for you.
ILLUSTRATING CONCEPT An initial concept image was created to share with collaborators to explain the project ambitions and outcomes succinctly and act as a stimulus. The fundamental barriers which prevented young people from finding out more about the Daily Rubbish content on twitter was convenience and low visibility. For iOS7 Apple developed iBeacon. Which enables push notifications to be sent to devices by beacons such as the ones designed by estimote.
The notification can be sent within a 50ft radius using wifi and is being used commercially to send product information and offers to customers shopping in-stores. The technology could send polling questions to people passing the installation as a way of engaging them.
What’s next? Get inspired and begin iterating ways of making visually engaging interface
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Interactive Sculpture
MOODBOARDS That should really say ‘what if it wasn’t a real tree but a digital tree?’
Me
Collecting a body of inspirational images which could inform the interaction, aesthetic and data visualisation of the installation.
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Interactive Sculpture
INFOGRAPHIC INSPIRATION How can you visualise increasing engagement? To show visual growth I created some Sketch GIFs and videoed the interplay of light, shadow and repeat pattern. The simple exercise got me thinking about how the data visuals could be integrated into a sculptural form instead of a digital screen to make it more of a spectacle.
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Me
Laura That should really say ‘what if it wasn’t a real tree but a digital tree?’
What if it said... ‘What if it wasn’t a real tree... what if it was a digital tree or a more appropriate method of visualisation?’
Interactive Sculpture
SCULPTURAL FORM How could a digital sculpture act as a barometer of local civic engagement? How could Technology and nature be combined? I used mixed media to begin iterating some ideas for a sculptural form and in the process went from complex organic structures to more refined digital ‘pillars’. The overly Conceptual, unfeasible, and inviable forms were not able to display the richness of information that the project required and making working prototypes would bee very hard to achieve in the time-frame. However, the extreme concepts can be use to inspire a more conventional digital display i.e. a touch screen or projection.
What if it said ‘just try a digital tree and only change it if it doesn’t work because you have to start somewhere and I’m in danger of not starting and Laura will kick off’
What if it said “Okay Laura you’re right”
Next Step Abandon the over-ambitious sculpture and generate a range of app and digital screen concepts.
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Project Plan
WHAT’S NEXT? I have created a list of priorities to ensure the project doesn’t fall at the final hurdle: 1) Contacting current collaborators to see how they could help me turn the conceptual design into a functioning service. This could help develop the interactive application or the installation itself. Mark Law NSU - use of projector 2) The design of the information graphics which will be the most prominent feature of the installation 3) The service design blueprint which will be used to communicate to political parties the way the system will work and how it will benefit each set of stakeholders 4) Creating a video to demonstrate how the concept would work 5) Creating a piece of communication which would look forward, exploring the way the interactive installation can sustain and strengthen the engagement of young people with civic matters
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Review moodboards
Create sample content for service
Buy iBeacons
Design the apps blueprint
Create an animation of the interaction design to be used instead of a real working prototype.
Design app interface
Design the growth interaction
Finalise an aesthetic for the whole project. Create a look and feel and brand book.
Design the way tree behaves when not interacting directly
Consider ease of demonstration
CJ1
Contact SU about using the projector
Mark Law - working app?
Find actors for video
Contacting external collaborators to see to what extent they can help build working prototypes
Design the leaf interaction
Develop a working prototype of the application and/or create a real world visualisation using a projector.
Create a service design blueprint/ booklet to ‘sell in’ project to external parties
CJ2 March 10
March 17
March 24
March 31
April 7
Introduction
LEE WAY
Develop storyboard
TIME PLAN
Create animation of app interaction Shoot video
Edit Video
Creating a demonstration video showing the way the installation interacts with its users and look forward to the way the project engages the youth over time.
April 14
April 21
April 28
May 5
Design presentation boards
May 12
May 15