FürDem

fürDem is the abbreviation of für Demokratie which means pro democracy in German. We think that there is too little exchange between political representatives and people. Polls by institutes – which every now and then prove to be wrong in predicting what comes next – are being used to portray the opinions but outside of elections there are only limited actual possibilities to initiate major political debates, express opinions, and influence political decision making. Many citizen also can‘t vote, only in the city of Heilbronnin Germany 29,700 adults are not eligible to vote – plus 4000 more who will turn 18 and not have the right to vote by the next election. 17,900 Children and youth cannot vote and before they’re 18 years old they will most certainly not be heard. [numbers of December 31st of 2018, Source: Stabsstelle Stadtentwicklung und Zukunftsfragen Heilbronn.

There are ways to engage in politics but places in which such engagements are possible, are designed in a way that one can only react to what’s being decided upon in advanced and by those who have made their ways to be politicians in such undemocratic milieus like Heilbronn. Besides these “ways” are sometimes hard to find, complicated and often time consuming. fürDem has the aim to strengthen the democracy by enabling political exchange, by discussing those topics that are relevant to you and it gives an insights into opinions. The aim of this app is real, result-oriented and meaningful political exchange is/ and should not be limited to (mainly quadrennial) elections only. We want to see the world with your perspectives and have your opinions, your thoughts on local (and global) political topics. We want your input to be the guidance of our political actions. On the other hand we want to keep you updated on our political activities and involve you in the processes of political decision making.

‍

Going into this design project, it was made clear that Furdem needed a tool that works similarly to a social platform where users can vote on local policies and help promote democratic change in their local area. For people to be able to vote, users will have the ability to create posts about local issues and share the issues with those who live in the same area. To help make uses understand what exactly they are voting on, users are encouraged to view posts and at the end of the post be able to cast their vote as well as comment on the issue. Along with having users vote, we also wanted to promote local events where users could go to connect and be part of the local political scene.

‍

‍

The goal of the profiles was for people to share their posts about local issues, show more information about themselves, allow others to see their calendars with the events they are planning to attend, and lastly their analytics with posts and votes on issues. The hope was that it would help foster communication between people and promote healthy conversations with regards to politics rather than the polarizing of political values we are currently seeing.

‍

‍

‍