Yesterday I showed Amit and my class my throw-away thesis artifact and my research into what already exists in the legislation transparency space. Specifically I showed them some of the great work that the Sunlight Foundation has been doing. That led to this question.

“If you don’t think opencongress.org works in the way you envision, why would a version of it that’s merely better designed work? … this might be a solution looking for a problem.”

- paraphrasing Amit’s question to me

Immediately my gut churned. When I first saw opencongress.org I immediately recognized that it is very similar to what I proposed, and what I proposed isn’t an order of magnitude better. Amit’s crit confirms it, and I need to step up. Opencongress.org is exposing legislation and a ton of metadata around it, which is great and important, but it doesn’t seem to be generating a lot of attention and discussion. A prettier, more legible design isn’t going to fix that.

My thesis needs to be an order of magnitude better. It needs to be different. This is a social and community design problem, not a UI and API design problem.

Don’t substitute the problem you ought to solve,
with a problem you can solve

That realization sucked. It felt so good to work on a small, manageable problem (e.g. making legislation more readable) with skills I already possess (e.g. visual design and web development). Will a more legible, better type-set legislation reading experience get people more politically engaged? Possible, but it’s unlikely the main factor.

So, now what?

Research and Customer Development

A couple of directions. First, I think I need to go back and look at what success really looks like, and how I might measure it. What is the vision, and what measurement will guide me there? This will require some deep thinking and conversations.

Second, the crit was a wake up call to focus on users and their needs. Whose problem am I fixing? Will I fix it in a way they care about? Can I do it in a radically simpler way? I need to really do some primary research. Ideas:

• Talk to people who are working on legislation and policy, and ask them why they got into it.
• Talk to “civilians” and ask them what they would like to know about policy, and what barriers they face in finding out.
• Talk to activists and ask them what stories they are trying to tell, and what challenges they face in being heard.
• Build a few customer development style experiments. What kind of language and model resonate with how people think about politics? Can my proposals get people to hand over their email addresses?

Gut churn feels awful. Finding yourself dropped way outside your comfort zone is distressing. However, there is a part of me that know this is exactly what I needed, and that I am lucky to run into this wall early in the process. In a way, I am now freed of the solution I wanted, and I can go find the solution people actually need.

It was never supposed to be that easy anyways, right? I do wish my stomach would settle down though.