Trying to imagine an EveryVote UX that I'd dogfood...

[mitchdowney]

Random ideas…sorry it’s like blog post long, no rush to read...

Might be neat if we have a search bar on the homepage or in the navbar with an input that says "type your full address or organization name". If a user wants their government election info they can type an address, if they want a student or some other election they can type organization name.

When visitor submits the search, the search result page would load. We’d need to create a new searchResults page, but this might be relatively easy because it can reuse the exact same ev-listing-folder directives as the current election page (but with data visible on page modified to use whatever data is available/relevant in the Google Civic API result).

Work to do: the searchResults template would need to group data by organizational hierarchy, something that the current Election page does not support. Currently an Election page only has offices and a list of candidates for each office…the new searchResults page would show this exact same data except would also need to display headers for organizational grouping (federal > state > county > township > local > etc).

To provide meaningful social sharing functionality, if a visitor selects the “I’m voting for” button at any time, that candidate would become visible on the visitors' public-facing My Candidates page. The My Candidates page could also potentially include candidates for student elections.

The My Candidates page would need more info than it currently has, such as when the upcoming elections are for the candidates included, and it would need to display organizational hierarchy maybe exactly like the searchResults page.

Might also be neat if when I go to the home page at everyvote.org, if I typed an address in on my previous visit (retrieved from localStorage, or else saved with an auth account) then the home page would immediately show a list of all my candidates (all or just my picks?) under the search bar. Want to see a list of all (almost all) your candidates? Goto everyvote.org, type in your address, see all your candidates...want to see them again? Goto everyvote.org and they'll all be there on the home page.

If I could press a "Join Group" button next to student or other organizations, then the EV homepage could include those candidates as well.