Inspiration
The importance of the upcoming 2020 election cannot be understated. Many Americans want to be engaged citizens, but don't know where to begin when deciding which candidates to vote for. Our project uses voice technology to ask users where they stand on political issues and let them know which of the 8 remaining Democratic presidential candidates are on the same page.
What it does
Using data on candidates' platforms collected from the Washington Post, our interactive voice user interface (VUI) prompts users to answer questions on a wide array of issues facing the US. After each question, we access our database to tell the user which candidates agree with them on that particular issue. At the end of the quiz, the user is informed of the three candidates that agreed with them on the most issues and is encouraged to vote in their primary.
How we built it
We used the Amazon Alexa Developer console. Programming was done in Python.
Challenges we ran into
Neither of us had ever used the Amazon Alexa Developer console (or used anything remotely related to voice assistants), so there was quite a steep learning curve. Furthermore, we ended up manually constructing our database from scratch, so a lot of time was spent considering the best way to organize our data. We also did our best to keep our VUI as neutral and random as possible as to not introduce bias into the system.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We made an Alexa Skill! In basically a day! Not only that, but an Alexa Skill that has the potential to help inform voters and make politics more accessible. We did some user testing with some friends in the dorm, and they all said they learned something about the 2020 candidates and that they were inspired to research more on their own!
What we learned
We learned some of the fundamentals of voice technology, and believe or it or not, after debugging our program for hours and hours we actually learned quite a bit about the Democratic candidates' platforms (and can even envision them in list form in our heads).
What's next for 2020 Democratic Candidate Quiz
Given more time, we would extend the Skill to be able to use APIs to get real time updates on the candidates, allow users to ask questions about the candidates, track voting histories of incumbent candidates, provide information/dates for primaries, and support local candidates in addition to presidential candidates.
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