KEYWORDS
election, British Columbia, democracy,
design, advertisement, campaign, youth

ABSTRACT

The focus of this paper is the process of
creating an advertisement campaign to
increase youth voter participation in the

upcoming 2013 British Columbia provincial

election under the leadership of Professor
Chris Hethrington. The voter campaign is
created through a partnership between
Elections BC and Emily Carr University of
Art + Design. Through collaboration with
students in different design disciplines we
broke the problem down into 4 different

avenues to successfully address the physical

and psychological obstacles to youth
participation. In this paper we consider
youth voters as those between the ages of
18-26. The goal of this project is to create
a multi-platform design and social media
advertisement campaign.

DESIGNING THE YOUTH VOTE
by SARAH WILSON

According to Thomas Darwin, “[o]ur capabilities are tested by the fact that many (if not most) of
the situations we encounter as communities present us with “wicked” problems. The most salient
feature of wicked problems from the standpoint of design is that they defy our typical approach
to problem solving.” [3] The issue of increasing youth voter participation can definitely be con-
sidered a “wicked” problem. There are many facets within the issue that needed to be addressed.
Attitudes and ideas around voting have changed with every generation; a feeling of civic duty
motivates previous generations, while political issues and ease of voting motivate today’s youth
voters. Our group was given one major constraint: because Elections BC is a non-partisan agency
we were not able to use social, political or environmental issues as a platform for our campaign.

CROSS DISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION

The foundation of Emily Carr’s Design for Democracy course is based on collaboration. The class
consists of students majoring in interaction design, communication design, industrial design, and
critical studies. In her text “ZIBA: Design and the FedEx project,” Maggie Breslin speaks to the val-
ue of collaboration in design: “Design research and the idea of connecting with users has become
an acknowledged, if underused, value. [...] Now the key to great products is widely thought to be
collaboration among a diverse set of disciplines, which can include visual designers, programmers,
industrial designers, architects, engineers, anthropologists, researchers, and sometimes even users
themselves.” [2] Collaboration between disciplines is a valuable part of the design process. The
Design for Democracy course has been a valuable experience for students as it demonstrates the
benefits of industry collaboration.

WHERE DO WE START?

Asa class, we reflected the age range we were targeting, and we consisted of both voters and
non-voters. In essence, we were designing for ourselves. As a class, we first broke the problem
down by media platforms: print, web, social media, video, and guerrilla marketing. We discussed
our individual strengths within each of the areas and divided ourselves into groups, with each
group being assigned one of the platforms based on their experience. Youth voter participation is
a large issue; we had broken up into groups based on our strengths, but now what?

M.P. Ranjan describes the creative process by saying that “[t]he process of design is the path of
human intentions being pursued by the designer or user of design through the stages of explo-
ration, composition, judgment and action. The stages are iterative and the designer revisits the
previous stages to develop conviction and build support for the next move forward.” [4] Asa
class, we struggled with how to begin tackling such a large problem. Most people who take part in
creative processes know that addressing such a large issue is never linear. Throughout this process,
we jumped back and forth to previous and later solutions.

ANTHROPOLOGY & SYSTEMS

“I