Overview
Write Change is a website that teaches aspiring activists how to write letters for their representatives. The form introduces writers to environmental causes in St. Louis and guides them through the steps to fill out a template letter, which teaches them the format of writing letters on their own in the future.
Research
Once I had one direction in mind (people who are interested in being politically active, but don’t feel confident taking action alone), I created a list of questions to guide me as I spoke with people in my target audience. As I conducted background on the process of writing letters to a representative, I discovered I had a second audience that needed to be acknowledged- the representatives receiving the letters and the aides that organize letters for representatives.
These audiences had conflicting desires, which became a sticking point I had to acknowledge the duration of my project. While the people I interviewed who would write letters valued a simple, formulaic process for creating a letter, the representatives disliked generic form petitions and requests and valued hearing personal stories from their constituents.
