The Web Design That Changed the World
Here’s a very interesting analysis of how website design played a role in our recent presidential election. Whatever your political affiliation, we can all appreciate what a difference the web made in the outcome of that race.
Enjoy!
Tim Anderson
The Web Design That Changed the World
BY Ravi Sawhney
I like to explore design’s reach into unexpected places. Today, I’d like to focus on design in politics… specifically, how, by creating emotional connection, the Web site my.barackobama.com (commonly known as MyBO), empowered a grassroots campaign that put a young Senator from Illinois in the Oval Office.
I don’t know if Chris Hughes, the Facebook Boy Wonder behind MyBO, considers himself a designer, but I certainly do. In fact, I believe he’s an extraordinary designer. No matter which side of the aisle you sit on, or what color your state, it’s impossible not to recognize the monumental impact the Internet played in the 2008 campaign.
The theme of MyBO came from Obama himself, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.” Obama asked people to believe. Chris Hughes gave them the tools to effect that change.
Hughes is known as “the Empath.” That’s fitting. Empathy is an essential–perhaps the essential–trait in successful designers. As I’ve said, “It’s not how the design or experience makes you feel, it’s how it makes you feel about yourself.” Designers have to be able to step outside themselves and into the hearts and minds of the end-users. A designer must be able to accurately imagine how a design will make a variety of users feel. This allows us to understand what features will elicit which feelings.
When designers determine the features going into a product, they’re not really designing features, they’re designing benefits. What’s more, they’re designing to create the emotions these benefits evoke. In the case of MyBO, the design was all about empowerment and hope. Empowerment to effect change; hope for a better world.
The real brilliance of MyBO.com is that the point of the online site was to facilitate real world activity. Take the Neighbor-to-Neighbor campaigns that connected members to undecided voters near them. But the “connection” Hughes worked so hard to design into the system wasn’t merely based on geography. Hughes sought the deeper connection, the emotional connection of commonality. By having volunteers call undecided voters with similar backgrounds and interests, Hughes empowered people to connect with the people they called. And once you truly connect with someone, it’s much easier for them to really hear what you have to say.
So what can we learn from Hughes and the design of MyBO? We can learn the value of creating designs that empower and connect. Don’t let the scope and impact of MyBO intimidate you. The empowerment doesn’t have to be as world-changing as the Obama campaign. It can be as simple as a kitchen tool that empowers a parent to make a meal that connects their family around the dinner table. The real benefit to companies is how this empowerment connects consumers to brands. When you successfully create this connection, you’ve set yourself up to benefit from the grassroots campaign known as viral demand. When people love your products, they’re happy to do your PR work for you.