Second Test (Button Press Booth)

After the garbage can poll validation, we found fitting into people’s daily actions will give skewed data since people have no choice but to interact with the polling booth. So we made a booth with voting as the sole purpose.

The total cost for this booth was 1000 rupees

To be a polling platform, we’ve identified 4 requirements.

1. attractiveness — how many people crossing the booth actually notice it?
2. intuitiveness — how long does it take for people to understand what the booth is, how to vote, and how to check results?
3. curiosity — how many people are interested to see the result of the poll?
4. consistency — in places with the same daily audience, are we getting the same interaction every day?

We ran a test with this booth in PSG Tech Hostel in front of a bakery. It’s placed so that people going from college to the bakery have to cross the polling booth.

On the first day we set a controversial question: Beast vs. Valimai. Here’s what we learned

• In a 1.5 hour period out of 300 people, close to 100 people interacted with the booth and 87 scanned the QR code to view results. The people who did not interact were the ones who went straight to their rooms. There were many groups waiting to vote as there was a crowd around the booth.
• Out of all the 100 people who walked up to the booth, everyone saw the question and understood how to vote.
• 30% of the voters did not immediately see the QR to see results. Once they scanned and saw the results, their interaction increased as they wanted to make their favorite side go up.
• Some guys tried tampering and breaking the booth since their side was loosing. One guy took the booth and ran until his friend stopped him and returned it.

On the second day, we set a normal question: Bikes vs. Cars. Here’s what we learned

• We got only 70–80 interactions in a 2 hour period. 52 people scanned the QR code to view the result.
• Once people scanned the QR code, they didn't care about making a particular option’s votes go up because they were not vested in the options.
• Everyone who interacted with the booth immediately understood how to vote.
• Female population tended not to spam and care about their vote.
• Boys in groups of more than 4 took the booth as a joke and voted against their friends for the fun of it.

In this test, we aimed to validate 3 metrics. Attractiveness, Intuitiveness, and Curiosity.

We were able to validate our booth’s intuitiveness. Of the people who walked up to the booth, 100% of them saw the question and voted within a couple seconds.

However we were not able to validate the attractiveness and curiosity due to 2 factors.

1. The booth was placed 15 feet in front of the bakery. We were trying to grab the attention of all the college students who crossed that path and not only the bakery’s customers. Because of this location, we were not able to judge how many of our target audience actually converted into voters.
2. People got the conception that we were a fun entity where their opinion didn’t matter. We believe this is because we set up as an isolated booth that is not part of an existing business/organization.

In order to validate the attractiveness and curiosity, we are going to setup at the entrance of a cafe and at the elevator in an apartment complex.

Using a specific location in people’s daily routine, we can use that conversion rate to judge how attractive our booth really is. (Ex: Of the people waiting for the elevator, how many vote? / Of the people entering the cafe, how many vote?)

By incorporating our brand with an existing one, we can make our voters curious by making them identify as a part of the stores/apartments audience. (Ex: scan to see what other customers think / scan to see what your neighbors think)

We’ll update how this test goes. Peace 🧑🏽‍🎤