Categories
None

2016 U.S. Primary Election search features

Screenshot of candidate search features with example content for Hillary Clinton

Planning and deployment of election-related search experiences to lead users to reliable information on commonly searched queries.

Screenshot of candidate search features with example content for Hillary Clinton
2016 US Presidential Election search features, including candidate Knowledge Graph with fundraising data from OpenSecrets.org and polling from Real Clear Politics.
Screenshot of candidate quotes feature with example content for Marco Rubio
Factchecked quotes from the Politifact Truth-O-Meter.
Screenshot of candidate issue stance feature with example content for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump on gun control
Where candidates stand on the issues, with researched positions from ProCon.org and “explore related” suggested queries manually curated.

Ask

I was approached by search product teams working on distinct experiences around the then-upcoming 2016 U.S. primary election to offer feedback on proposed designs and organize editorial efforts in content curation and quality validation.

Process

  1. Led team effort to develop detailed list of potential features along with timeline, content source(s), and priority. Features based on team knowledge and real user search data/query patterns.
  2. Researched content sources for features that would be relevant in early 2016 (general politics, candidate research). Key requirements included high-quality, politically neutral data; structured in a way that was compatible with our content management platform; served in XML or JSON format or able to be extracted and converted to usable form.
  3. Joined product team meetings to give updates on content development and share feedback on whether design matched real content and user needs.
  4. Created and launched experiences on web search and provided support for other platforms using our work.

Result

By February 2016, we launched several features on web search:

  • Presidential candidate knowledge graph, incorporating party affiliation, donation data from OpenSecrets.org, polling data, and political office history.
  • Latest quotes with “truthfulness” rating from Politifact for all presidential candidates.
  • Candidate stances on 20+ key political issues extracted from ProCon.org with manually curated browse element to help search users explore candidate opinions.
  • Political cartoon of the day.

Additionally, detailed requirements for election results and future election experience ideas were documented.