writetothem
writetothem copied to clipboard
mysociety
Improve 'choose representative' display of reps
I know this has been discussed before but can't find a ticket for it. Currently the display of the /who page lists representatives in horizontal rows, with councillors first in the list. The old design had vertical columns allowing the user to see more than one type of representative at a time, which IMO was better for usability (but does present a problem when there are lots of types of rep, I acknowledge) by showing at a glance that there are other options.
Today I dealt with a user support email which seemed to me to be a "scroll down" error - he'd successfully written to a councillor (so it wasn't a problem using the site) but was asking about how to email an MP.
We could at least put the most commonly written-to type of representative first in the list, which I suspect is MPs.
I'm trying to remember if there was a separate ticket for it too - but changing the order to the most common first has been on my wish list since day one, @zarino had a look into when he did the design polish a couple of weeks ago but it needs some developer intervention.
The four equal columns design got dropped when we proved that the horizontal design matched it in performance (of course the equal columns only worked on large screens anyway) but I did put together a design that added a 'jump to' navigation that we were going to try, had the horizontal layout performed badly, it's below (it's a bit off aesthetically but might be worth A/B testing).
In these modern times, wouldn't it be possible to try a completely new approach? I'm vaguely thinking of something that didn't lay out all the options in a single list like this, but somehow filtered your needs so that you only saw the options relevant to you.
So maybe as well as the 'who do you want to write to?' bar as above, there'd also be a 'what do you want to write about?' option for those who knew their topic but not who it should go to.
Yes, I can already see the many problems with this approach as well, and foresee the 'my issue doesn't fit your categories' support mail :) But maybe a thought to discuss and refine?
Machine learning! You just type your postcode and your message, and the computer analyses your message and sends it to the representative it thinks your message matches the best. Feedback from the satisfaction questionnaire is used as training material for the algorithm.
(I am actually half serious.)
It's not an utterly stupid idea, as long as we have decent anonymisation going on since we'd be feeding someone's message along with the rep type into the classifier to train it.
User confused by this today, claiming a campaign wanting her to write to her MP had linked her to write to councillors (because councillors are at the top of the list).
Relevant comment from a user:
Your website tries to do too much too quickly. May I suggest that you have one site for MPs and another for local Councillors? Not all of us are familiar with what happens where in the Houses of Parliament and Local Councils. As an example of how much easier it is to progress a particular issue, I suggest you visit 38 degrees website - much more concise and easier to use effectively straightaway.
How about if we allowed people to build a link to write to a certain rep? Eg writetothem.com?limit=mp and you go direct to your rep (if there is one) or to a page that only has the relevant reps
progress a particular issue
On further thought, this latest message may come from a user who was sent to WTT via a campaign, and thus may be displaying the usual confusion about to what degree we're part of that campaign.
A user has written to say he wanted to write to his MP but
There is no contact option on the right hand side of the page. I wish to write to her immediately.
I can only think he missed the fact that her name is a link; exacerbated by the 'write to all councillors' link being on the right.
Lots of people at the moment are writing to their councillors about an issue that would be more suited for MPs to deal with. A councillor got in touch today to suggest putting the MP at the top of the list.
I think in this instance people are actually being encouraged by a social media campaign to write to councillors, but it remains a good suggestion nevertheless, albeit I am biased given it was mine originally. ;)