In 2020, it was hard to find someone that did not agree that, generally, political conversations over social media are toxic. Regardless, we continue to participate in unproductive and inflammatory discourse that is damaging to the way we see one another.
Social media could be a very powerful tool for politicians to better understand their constituents needs if we could find a more productive way to shape our online conversations. Through conversations with local & state level representatives we learned that 70% were not satisfied with social media as a tool to gain a better understanding of their constituents because it is too nationalized, rife with trolls, bots, and bullies, and unstructured/difficult to use for decision making
Herd aimed to change this dynamic by creating an inclusive but vibrant space for policy conversation directly with your representatives.
I was the technical co-founder and lead the product design and engineering efforts. We built a fair number of iterations of the app and were able to get some really great feedback from users and politicians from each of them.
In the end, my co-founder and I were weighing really exciting job offers. We decided to end the project. I am still really proud of the work we did over the course of those 2 years and the conversations we had about making politics more accessible, less toxic, and more productive.
