Design Challenge: Congressional Vote Data

Hey - author here!

I think this is a really fun article covering human behavior in "at a glance" intuition of complex data. If you're interested in more I'll also be posting about the math/trig involved and how frustrating working with Congressional data can be (but rewarding!). You can dive through demo code here: https://github.com/use-civic/congress-vote-widget

The article is part of a side project I've put about 2k - 3k hours into. It's very similar to the concept of GovTrack.us but modern, focused on intuition, has a mobile app, and is completely open source (soon!). It also caters to a 12-year old's intuition: the biggest benefit in getting more Americans excited about civic duty.

Inspiration came from traveling abroad (sorry to be trite). The number of people that cared about civic duty was astounding and refreshing to me. I certainly didn't care, and my friends didn't either. When I tried getting more informed I quickly hit a brick wall in trying to understand even simple terms used in congress.gov & GovTrack.us. Like "tabling" a bill - the heck is that?! The barrier to entry in basic civic duty shouldn't be so high.

This article is the first act in a major initiative of sharing everything I've learned. I'm sitting on a treasure trove of fascinating information about Congress, how it works, data, and design concepts to make it intuitive. The goal of making data intuitive but still cater to power users has been challenging, but fun. Over Christmas break I decided it was time to start sharing and finalizing the push to open source it all.

This has been a whole barrel of fun, and I hope y'all find it interesting too. If anyone wants to talk there's a few links in the article (at the bottom) to stay updated, or you can always email me directly: zlschuessler@gmail.com

Have fun reading!