ThruTalk
Personal Project Fall 2020
A UI redesign for the North Carolina Democrat’s preferred phone banking platform makes it easy for older volunteers start making calls without needing to receive training from a political organizer. While volunteering with the North Carolina Democratic Party leading up to the 2020 election, I worked with two NCDP organizers to compile existing painpoints and new concepts for ThruTalk.
Skills:
User research, User testing, digital prototyping, Figma
Problem
The current ThruTalk automatic “dialer” is very confusing and intimidating for new political volunteers, especially those over 40, to learn.
As a result, political organizers teach older volunteers (who make up the majority of all political volunteers) to use a manual-entry software to phone bank. This is a slow and inefficient process with a 8% caller pick-up rate.
Solution
A redesigned user interface with a built-in tutorial enables political volunteers of any age to phone bank with the ThruTalk automatic “dialer”.
By having all political volunteers who are phone banking use the automatic “dialer”, which has a 90% caller pick-up rate, an organization can dramatically increase their outreach capability.
Process
“Fifty percent of my job is just troubleshooting with volunteers on the dialer and essentially being their tech support.”
- Sophie Chien, NC Democratic Organizer
“ThruTalk is something that we use because its necessary, because its very effective at actually calling people and getting to conversations at a much faster pace than with Open VPB (a manual entry phone banking software).”
“It’s really tricky to teach to volunteers, particularly ones who aren't as young and aren’t as adaptable and need a slower step-by-step process. It would be great if it were much more intuitive.”
-Maegan Murphy, NC Democratic Organizer
Key insights
A political organizer’s time is spent recruiting volunteers (the majority of whom are over 50 years old) and teaching them how to use phone and text banking software.
The majority of an organizer’s time in the final weeks leading up to an election is spent as tech support for volunteers who have difficulty using various outreach software.
A simplified and intuitive UI design would allow organizers to spend their time recruiting new volunteers rather than assisting existing ones, expanding their organization’s outreach.
Current Painpoints
Lack of hierarchy. An excess of information and buttons creates an overwhelming sense of clutter. Essentials such as “next call” and a voter’s name are not visually prioritized.
No tutorial. New users are not able to accustom themselves with the UI or the questions before immediately talking to voters. This results in a flustered and intimidating first experience and unsuccessful voter outreach.
No pause button. Users have to log off completely to take a break and log back in to begin calling again.
Redundancies. Button redundancies require a user to click on multiple buttons before advancing to the next call.
User feedback
I presented rounds of iteration and prototypes to organizers from the North Carolina Democratic Party as well as with NCDP phone-banking volunteers to select the best designs and bring in new ideas throughout the process.
Design
Simplified User Interface
A simple layout and clean interface with
strong visual hierarchy make the “dialer” easy to learn and pleasant to operate.
Built-in Video Tutorial
The video tutorial teaches volunteers of all ages how to use the “dialer” without assistance from a political organizer.
Auto-advancing questions
Automatically-advancing questions keep the conversation flowing and prevent the volunteer from skipping questions or getting distracted when trying to input information about the voter.
Question indicator
The question indicator helps volunteers keep conversations flowing naturally as they anticipate their length.
Script Notes
An integrated, expandable notepad replaces talking points users often have on Post-its or on paper.
Essential voter information
Users only see essential voter information to keep the interface uncluttered by extraneous information. More experienced users can expand the voter information to view the voter’s federal and state voting districts.
Visible Stats
Discrete personal and group statistics keep volunteers motivated and connected to their organization while phone-banking alone.