What happens in parliament?
"Lots of hot air", "People are interrupting each other", "Things are being decided".
These are some of the assessments made by participants, who took part in a brainstorming session on the mysteries - as it seems - of the Swiss parliament.
Especially for young people or inexperienced voters, the activities in the Swiss parliament are some kind of "black box". What could an app, which strengthens voters' understanding of the national parliament, look like? And why would someone choose to use such an application over watching another episode on Netflix
New (entertainment) technologies capture our attention, shape our opinions and take up a large part of our free time. Entertainment is often just a click away, while it takes several more clicks to find educational, well-researched and attractively presented information. We want to change that. The same motivational mechanics that work in the fields of entertainment media are used to encourage political self-education. We involve voters, we involve political actors, we develop solutions together. With young people from all over Switzerland, we are finding out how to address this lack of interest in the national parliament. We integrate their ideas into two apps, that convey principles of democratic processes in an intuitive way, and that allow transparent insights into the happenings in the federal parliament.
CH+Link is a further development of PROJEKT CH+ Games for Democracy, an ongoing initiative in which two game-based election aids are being researched and developed since 2019. During this time, it became clear that offering support during elections is not enough. People want to know how elected political actors behave. In order to achieve our goal of encouraging political participation amongst young people in Switzerland, the focus during CH+Link lies on presenting democratic processes in a way that is easy to understand, and to give voters transparent insights into the happenings inside the Swiss parliament. Through a playful approach, we aim to increase democratic participation, while also educating voters about the Swiss system.
In all design and development processes, we rely on co-design: the apps' new functionalities can be co-determined during individual test sessions, workshops and public surveys.