Utah Legislation Made Easy
Overview
Legislation in Utah moves fast, so understanding new bills can be confusing and time consuming. This project explored how people are currently engaging with Utah's laws and identified opportunities to make them more accessible. Through surveys, interviews, and usability testing, we were able to uncover some major pain points and insights that will guide the future development of an app designed to help everybody understand legislation clearly and more confidently. The information is public, but it's not at all accessible. Our team wanted to understand a simple question with some complicated implications: Why is it so hard for everyday people to stay informed about the laws that affect them, and what exactly could make it easier?
Listening Before Designing
We begin with real people, not just assumptions. We approached people and started conversations about how they currently learn about the bills being passed around them. Across interviews, surveys, and public outreach, one theme emerged again and again: People want to understand legislation, but legislation isn't designed for people.
Research Methods
Field Interviews: Talking to students on campus as well as interns at the Capitol
Surveys (hundreds of responses): Distributed through Facebook groups, Reddit forums, and university halls
Usability Testing: A Figma prototype of an AI-powered bill summary app was tested with six participants to help identify core needs and pain points
What Utah Residents Told Us
Our survey revealed just how wide this gap really is…
Interview Insights
Our interviews painted a consistent picture: people weren't looking for political debate, they were looking for clarity. Participants wanted fact-checked summaries, clear citations, simple and unbiased language, and easy ways to trace information back to original sources. What they didn't want was AI to replace judgement. They wanted it to support it. As one of our participants said:
"I just want to know whats really going on."
Usability Testing
We tested our mobile prototype with six different participants, ranging from college-aged to older adults. Each session lasted about 20 minutes and focused on tasks like identifying who's affected by a bill, understanding its content, locating voting records, and tracing AI claims to sources.
Key Findings
AI summaries Were Central: Every participant relied on the AI-generated summaries first. They described them as "easily digestible," and "finally something I can read."
Icons Were Ambiguous: Engagement icons (like, dislike, bookmark) caused a lot of confusion and hesitation. Users clearly wanted some clarity about their purpose.
Voting Records Were Hard to Find: None of our participants were able to easily locate how a senator voted, which highlighted a major issue with our prototype.
Tracing AI Sources Was Confusing: Only four out of our six participants could find the source hyperlinks, and even then, the context was unclear.
Design Revisions
Integrate Voting Records: Make the way your representative voted be visible at the top of the page under the graphic.
Icon Clarity: Replace ambiguous like/dislike icons with a system letting users indicate whether the bill applies to them or not, making the experience more personalized.
Clearer AI Citations: Highlight the relevant portion of the summary when clicking a hyperlink to make source tracking more obvious.
Next Steps
This project will continue beyond the classroom. Future work will include retesting the updated prototype with a broader demographic, expanding the app with additional features, refining citation clarity to strengthen AI trust, testing on multiple device types, and developing user personas from survey data to guide long-term strategy.
Reflection
This project wasn't just about building an app. It was about giving people access to the laws that shape their lives. Legislation shouldn't feel so distant or confusing. With research-driven design and thoughtful AI integration our goal is to make understanding bills simple, transparent, and finally accessible for everyone.
