Design Samples
Our goal in internet design is to create simple and culturally neutral ways to explore the sample group of American voters taking part in the deliberative poll. We intend to provide links to their opinions, to their personal profiles or blogs, and to present the deliberative process as they discuss issues within the group.
We've moved forward from these early samples by including webcams and videochat software as the basis for group participation. For more technical detail about those features, see Q & A. Note that text within these demo graphics relates to the earliest stage of concept. Current specifications are on the Q & A page.
Below are some rough sketches of our first drafts. Click on any of the samples to enlarge.
The first page shows a weekly question. We plan to structure questions with less of a soundbite quality, but we started here as an example of an issue facing all Americans.
Users can display the responses to the question in map form.
And begin to dive down into the map to get more information about a particular person by clicking on their image.
Or view a 'blog' page that features longer comments from a person, complete with someone of differing views. We would aim to create dialogue between contrasting pairs, and then track the dialogues over weeks and months as the entire group considers more questions.
The designer sketched in the map idea with just a couple of portraits, repeated. In fact, 100 individuals would appear in these portraits. Also -- because US population is concentrated on the coasts, the density of portraits would fall differently than is indicated here.
An earlier design sketch is below.
In this version, clicking the 'start' button would randomly bring the user to any of the 100 participants home pages, as an exercise in understanding the demographic proportions of the United States. How many clicks, on average, would it take to find someone with an income above $ 50,000, with a college degree, or from Wyoming?
Or users could click on any of the dots, and dive down into someone's homepage.
Each homepage or blog would contain a diary entry (and an archive of previous entries) as well as photographs (and, in an advanced version, sound and video).
Another style of mock-up is shown in this set: here, here and here.
For an example of online photo essays, click here.