The Web Design That Changed the World

I like to explore design’s reach into unexpected places. Today, I’d like to focus on design in politics… specifically, how, by creating emotional connection, the Web site my.barackobama.com (commonly known as MyBO), empowered a grassroots campaign that put a young Senator from Illinois in the Oval Office.

I don’t know if Chris Hughes, the Facebook Boy Wonder behind MyBO, considers himself a designer, but I certainly do. In fact, I believe he’s an extraordinary designer. No matter which side of the aisle you sit on, or what color your state, it’s impossible not to recognize the monumental impact the Internet played in the 2008 campaign.

The theme of MyBO came from Obama himself, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.” Obama asked people to believe. Chris Hughes gave them the tools to effect that change.

Hughes is known as “the Empath.” That’s fitting. Empathy is an essential—perhaps the essential—trait in successful designers. As I’ve said, “It’s not how the design or experience makes you feel, it’s how it makes you feel about yourself.” Designers have to be able to step outside themselves and into the hearts and minds of the end-users. A designer must be able to accurately imagine how a design will make a variety of users feel. This allows us to understand what features will elicit which feelings.