MPs currently using MyMP

We welcomed Simon Hughes MP to MyMP today.

Although take-up of MyMP has been slower than we had hoped for so far, it’s great that such high-profile MPs are coming on board and using MyMP to keep in touch with their constituents. Simon is our first MP from the London area, but we are gaining quite a reasonable spread of MPs using the app across the rest of the country.

Some initial observations: MPs using MyMP are generally representing rural constituencies. There are five Scottish MPs using MyMP but no Welsh MPs, and there is a fairly even spread of political parties using the app.

The full list of MPs now using MyMP is as follows:

Danny Alexander MP, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey

William Bain MP, Glasgow North East

Mighael Crockart MP, Edinburgh West

Lindsay Hoyle MP, Chorley

Simon Hughes MP, Bermondsey and Old Southwark

Julian Huppert MP, Cambridge

Graham Jones MP, Hyndburn

Brandon Lewis MP, Great Yarmouth

Stephen Lloyd MP, Eastbourne

Sheryll Murray MP, Devizes

Simon Reevell MP, Dewsbury

Adrian Sanders MP, Torbay

Andrew Smith MP, Oxford East

Graham Stuart MP, Beverley and Holderness

Jo Swinson MP, East Dunbartonshire

John Woodcock MP, Barrow and Furness

David Wright MP, Telford

MyMP App… a ray of hope for MPs in reaching younger audiences?

* Public Zone intern Melissa Hudson has written up her thoughts on the MyMP app. Thanks Melissa! *

Recent news stories have evolved around the trend that ‘candidates who have more fans on Facebook win on election night’. The fact that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have over 165000 fans between them shows that MPs may be gaining fans, but are they gaining activists?

Several young adults, much like older people, feel that their voice is not being heard. As a result they feel reluctant to side with a certain party, which was demonstrated by the election of the coalition government.

So why aren’t MPs’ messages breaking through successfully?

In comparison to politicians pages, when I scan through musicians pages I have ‘liked’ on Facebook, I see a fresh stream of status updates asking fans what they want to hear in the set list of upcoming gigs, conversing with them occasionally and sometimes thanking them for feedback.

What is the result of this personal and constant communication? Fans are hooked, maybe even slightly obsessed. They constantly look out for concerts, latest news and are then moved to buy tickets or merchandise. Therefore a meaningful relationship has been set into motion.

Even though MPs political messages have less room for personality and conversational tones, should this be an excuse?

According to the Electoral Commission, 22% of students are not even registered to vote in the 2010 General Election election and a poll carried out by NFP Synergy, found that more than 90% of children believe politicians can’t be trusted.

So as soon as they reach voting age, they have already made up their mind not to get involved.

It is interesting to note however, in a recent survey more than half of young people said ‘they would be more likely to take part if they could vote online or via a text message. Is this saying that a mixture of convenience and ease of participation will suffice to gain the vote of a younger constituent?

So maybe the MyMP App, which allows MPs to connect directly to constituents on iPhones and converse with one another, is a step in the right direction. With more young adults purchasing iPhones, can the MPs use this software advantageously so they are not only reaching younger audiences but also connecting with them? Lets hope so.

Authenticity in political communications

On my blog a few days ago I wrote a small post on my impression of trends in service design – how coffee shops were becoming a signifier for a larger trend towards pared-down, quality oriented design in products and services.

It struck me that many of the same principles might apply to political communications. Whilst the Labour Leadership candidates debate how to reconnect with voters through building shared understandings, and the ‘Big Society’ programme continues – at first evaluation – to look like it might cut and erode communities across the country, I wondered if similar approaches to the way we communicate with each other in political contexts could be part of the way we build this new society that will be necessary to tackle the economic and environmental crisis.

There are a number of really great case studies already out there that show that a more genuine and accessible approach to talking with people can be highly effective in a digital context. I’ll write about some of them soon.

In terms of MyMP, the implication could be that we dramatically rethink the way we approach the user experience on the app. We could move towards a much less slick, less glossy aesthetic, which would maybe take us away from the iPhone’s visual identity cues and into the taste boundaries of far more potential users. This is an interesting question for us as it asks us to think about how MyMP will fit into the wider mix of communications channels constituents have available to them, how we will approach our roll-out onto other platforms, and which platforms those are.

John Kingsbury introduces MyMP at Hansard Society event

The same night that version 1 of our app was up for a Nominet Internet Award, The Hansard Society held an event to talk about ‘MPs and Digital Engagement’ in Portcullis House

There are some good audio clips on the Hansard Society website, including one of Jon Kingsbury from Nesta, who funded our trial period for version 2. He’s talking about the digital landscape and how MyMP fits in.

Derek Powazek’s thoughts on designing for iPad

We haven’t built an iPad version of MyMP, but I thought this blog post about iPad design had some relevant points for iPhone and other touch devices as well, so I’ll share it here.

What can apps do for charity?

One of Public Zone’s MDs Jonathan Simmons was interviewed this week in Third Sector magazine about using apps to help organisations campaign or fundraise.

It’s a good read and covers a lot of the current thinking and case studies. Some charities report having problems with the Apple application approval process, especially when trying to include fundraising capability. A conversation we’ve had here with Helen Barrett, who wrote the piece, has highlighted that there are far fewer restrictions on apps for Google’s Android platform.

It is likely that more and more smartphones will start using this platform. So organisations should be keeping an eye on the takeup levels of Android apps, and be thinking about whether there is a big enough audience for their campaign in that space. In future, there could be as many users, with the same app literacy as there currently are on the iPhone platform, and charities especially will want to make sure they are reaching those potential supporters.

For those looking into the approval process, the developer we worked with, Red Glasses, keeps a helpful twitter feed of rejections, suspensions, and acceptances for the Apple Store.

The MyMP version 2 launch MPs

The latest major release of MyMP launched on July 1st, with 4 MPs from across the parties. Jo Swinson MP couldn’t join us for a photoshoot, but the other three MPs proudly displayed their phones for the press on College Green.

John Woodcock MP was pleased to be one of the first MPs to be able to connect with constituents.

Michael Crockart MP is a strong advocate of local dialogue and understanding, and was pleased to be able to set up another way of talking about local issues with the people he represents.

Brandon Lewis MP was keen to set up MyMP so that he could stay in touch with residents of Great Yarmouth.

MyMP gets started

Over the past 5 years, the team at Public Zone have been privileged to work with some of the UK’s leading non-profit organisations.

As a mainly digital agency, working solely with clients from the public and voluntary sectors, we’ve also been uniquely placed over the past five years to see the huge paradigm-shift in the public sphere towards online campaigning and participation.

The MyMP app is a result of what we’ve seen at Public Zone in these last 5 years, and a statement of our views on the future context of collaboration & engagement in representative systems.

We’ve started this blog just as MyMP version 2 marks its 10th MP to sign up. We’ll be talking about the app here, as well as about the context in which it operates, developments, set-backs, and other inspirational examples of digital engagement. From all of these, we hope to learn, and we’ll talk about that too.

Hopefully the things we learn and talk about will be of value to other people, and we welcome comments, criticism and ideas. They might help future releases and iterations of MyMP become even more useful to constituents and the MPs who serve them, or they might help another reader make their project more effective. Whatever reason, we hope you’ll enjoy hearing what we’re up to, and we’re looking forward to hearing from you about your projects and thoughts.

Political iPhone apps reviewed

As General Election build-up has been building up, there has been lots of talk about how it will be the UK’s first ‘digital election’.

That may or may not be true – there is still tremendous value in everything that’s going on on the doorstep – but there are definitely a number of things happening online that weren’t available online or otherwise during the last election.

One of those things is the emergence of the app, and their subsequent use by the main political parties for campaigning purposes.

Having just scoped and designed an iPhone app for MPs to use when they’re doing ‘running the country’ stuff instead of campaigning, I thought I’d see how these new apps measure up.

First off, I need to establish what I’ll be looking for. Even though the apps are essentially there to do the same thing, they have quite different approaches, visually and functionally. So I’m going to ask more general questions and then see how the apps answer them.

The questions are:

Does this app excite me about the Party?
Can I engage in their policies?
Do I feel valued by the Party?
Is it possible for me to get more involved if I want to?

Does this app excite me about the Party?

Well, there’s no denying here that the Conservative home screen is cleaner, more modern looking, and probably a little more on brand generally. The Labour home screen has followed the more traditional iPhone interface guidelines, which to some will seem quite traditional.

However, in terms of getting a sense of the depth of the apps, I think Labour wins, by implying through the ‘slide’ interface that there is much more information available at the next stage. The menu options on the Labour app are clearer, too, giving the user a greater sense of what they can expect from the app right at the outset.

What about the Liberal Democrat app?

When I started thinking about this post, there was only a Lib Dem app for the European Elections last year. Now, they have a manifesto app as well.

It has a nice clean introductory page that allows you to chose what you want to hear about, and then watch a video of Nick Clegg talking about it. Unfortunately, though, that’s about it. There’s not much else to compare in terms of app features with the other two main parties, so I’m going to leave it here. Friends of mine who have downloaded the app quite like its simplicity, so there you go.

Onwards…

Can I engage in their policies?

Well, aside from the epic accessibility fail on the Conservatives’ part (white text over white background), it’s fairly easy to quickly get a sense of the policy responses available to explore. The tories have used the Apple picker, and Labour have used the scrolling list. If I was being picky I’d say you could see a lot more of what’s available on the Labour app, but I think people quite like playing with those picker things.

Can we engage with the party policies? I quite like that Labour have a little line at the top giving an introduction to the tone of all the policies. If a user is into fairness, fair rules, fair chances and a fair say for everyone, then hopefully they’ll be getting the sense that this is the party for them.

Not much to say about these next screens. I suspect that I’ll want to have a go at that ridiculous lens-flare on most screens. In this instance there are more tangible things pledged by the Conservatives than Labour, but that’s not the case on all policies.

In the case of news, the Labour app uses pictures, which is nice, more engaging than the blue. It’s also way clearer that the Labour headlines are links to stories. But on some Labour screens the text breaks a bit on some special characters (like apostrophes and ampersands, not Ed Balls) and bleeds out of the area that was intended for it. That’s not really un-engaging, but it just feels a bit shoddy.

Neither app really allows the user to take ownership of the news or policy at this level, which is sad. It would be great to be able to tell a friend about this particular policy area, or maybe open up some sort of discussion forum. Also, for a new visitor, there’s no way to quickly see if you are a policy match to the parties, which the Green Party have done very well.

Do I feel valued by the Party?

I would love to know how many people have used the voter ID system in the Conservative app.

I made these screen shots on the way to Bristol last weekend, and the Labour app used my GPS location to give me the contact details of the local organiser. Instant win. There’s quite a lot of win in this area on the Labour app actually.

The conservative approach throughout the app is very top-down, only allowing users to contribute funds and contact details, rather than getting involved themselves. It’s a real shame to see mobile used in this way; essentially as a mini-website from 2006. You can see here the Labour app getting a bit confused between my postcode (Brixton) and my location at the time (Reading), but this is in principle a massive step in the right direction for how I feel political parties should be using the internet.

The Conservatives do make good use of some of the other technology available in the iPhone though. There’s quite a fun ‘swing-o-meter’ which allows you to wiggle the phone to see how much of a swing to the right is needed to secure a Tory majority (about 7%). It’s quite funny that it doesn’t allow a tilt to the left, or allow the user to change priorities to Liberal Democrat, or in fact do anything other than dream about a  20% swing, but it’s quite a nice toy to play with. It could also be quite a good argument for more proportional representation, but it’s not been framed that way.

Is it possible for me to get more involved if I want to?

The Labour app makes it far easier for a prospective supporter to get more directly involved, with twitter links, local campaigners, events and news all shown right from the start, and the Conservative app does link out to facebook twitter and youtube. One of the Lib Dem app’s major tab bar functions is to open an email with an itunes store link to forward.

But for me, the major fail is that neither app takes this any further. These apps should literally put supporting your party in the palm of your hands.

Overall opinions

If nothing else, these apps seem to me to be quite good indications of how each party thinks. On one hand you have an institutional, top-down approach. On the other, a locally-minded grassroots approach. It’s funny and maybe a little bit worrying that the recently published manifestos seem to be completely the other way round, at least at first glance. I don’t think any app will particularly sway the election in any meaningful way, and it’s sad that many of the features will be a little redundant after the election, especially for the Lib Dems and Tories.

2010 may very well be the first digital election, but I think it will be 2015 before politicians are really able to learn to use mobile in the way it should be used; to empower individuals to shape their own level of interaction with the cause, and give and receive real political value from direct, local engagement.

** This is from my personal Aspire2Enquire blog, a post that I wrote before the General Election. **

Effective Online Campaigning

In December 2009, Public Zone launched a handbook for effective online campaigning, to be used by non-profit organisations, and charities.

Written by Client Services Director Jo Shaw (who we hope to have on the MyMP blog soon), It’s got some really helpful tips inside, enabling organisations to think both long-term and right now about the way they use online tools to campaign for their causes.

If you click through to the Public Zone blog page, you can download a pdf there.

The launch was quite special as well, held at Quintessentially Soho

** This is an edited version of our designer  Tom Harle‘s original post when the booklet launched in December, from his own blog, Aspire to Enquire **