The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Studio Editorial 2025
Group of two
Through a hypothesis- and opportunity-driven process, we will explore how the Norwegian Directorate of Elections can serve as a neutral platform for young voters to learn about politics. The platform promotes critical thinking and aims to give users greater confidence in their own positions, making it easier for them to participate in public debate.
“Mitt Standpunkt” is a platform where young people can learn about politics through short exercises. As they progress, their personal dashboard updates to reflect their values and positions, creating a more nuanced picture of where they stand.
The platform combines several features to make politics tangible and personal. In the values section, users prioritize what matters most to them and see how these values connect to political topics. A party alignment indicator suggests which parties they share most with, not as a definitive match but as a guide. The value compass places the user in relation to political parties across different themes, while the reflection tool lets them revisit and adjust earlier answers, emphasizing that it is natural to change one’s mind. Together with short political exercises, these components provide a more engaging and nuanced entry point to politics.
Many young people rely on “valgomater” (voting advice applications) when deciding who to vote for, but these often contain complex questions that are hard to understand. Social media, meanwhile, presents politics in a polarized and oversimplified way. While young voters care more about values than single issues, many also hold back from debate because they feel insecure or unsure of their own opinions. We saw an opportunity to design a platform that highlights nuance, reflection, and learning, helping users gain confidence in their standpoint and see alignment with multiple parties across topics.
The project followed a hypothesis-driven design process, where we developed and tested assumptions, explored different concepts, and conducted user testing at OsloMet and AHO canteens. It was refined through several iterations, informed by feedback from students, meetings with the Norwegian Directorate of Elections and an election researcher, and UI prototyping of the platform.
Your political color palette shows that politics are not black and white, and you can agree on different parties on different topics.
The dashboard shows where you stand in the political landscape and updates in real time based on your views.
In highlighted values you can adjust the size of a value, and see you color palette on different topics. The party you are most agree with are ment as indicators, not party match.In the value compass you get an indicator on how you position yorself in the political landscape. You can go back to your previos exercises to adjust you answer, encourages to reflect and change your mind.
Even tho it was not our main focus in this task we created wireframes on how the exercises could look like, focusing on other opinions, value based questions, how it will affect the user, and interactivity with possible outcomes.
From twelve initial ideas, we developed four concepts.Our focus area was values and personalization.Suggested topics for you topics will appear, based on you interests.
We made a scenario with Pia. She was used to learn about politics through social media, where debates are black-and-white and opinions increasingly extreme. After using “Mitt standpunkt”, she discovered that politics is nuanced, and that it is possible to agree with all political parties on different issues.