POP: getting people into everyday civics, outside the two parties
A mobile app concept I invented and designed to pull Americans into everyday civics — getting to know candidates and leadership decisions directly, rather than through the filter of the two major parties.
The problem
Most people encounter candidates only at the top of the ballot, weeks before an election, filtered through party affiliation and whatever advertising reached them. The everyday decisions — who leads which committee, who is selected for what — happen without any of us watching, and the two-party frame flattens everything else.
The result is a public that is asked to vote on people it has had no way to get to know.
The idea
An app designed to make civics a habit rather than an event: a way to encounter candidates and leadership decisions directly and continuously, with transparency built into the mechanic, so that party label is not the only signal available.
This page needs your detail
The premise above is yours; the specifics are not on record yet. To finish this page I need: what "POP" stands for and where the name came from, what the core interaction actually is (are users voting on party leadership? rating positions? something else?), what problem with the two-party system specifically you designed around, what the main screens do, and how far it went — concept, prototype, or tested. Given the 2017 date, any context about what prompted it would strengthen the opening.
Why it belongs here
Along with the HELP App, this is early evidence of a habit that has defined my career since: seeing a system that fails the person inside it, and designing the missing piece rather than complaining about it.