iVotes.

Client & context

The Advance Arkansas Institute (AAI), working with Conduit for Commerce, publishes the Freedom Scorecard - a report that rates every member of the Arkansas General Assembly on their votes. The 2012-2013 edition rated legislators across six categories: economic freedom, education reform, good government, personal liberty, small government and tax and budget policy.

The challenge

The scorecard was a dense report. AAI wanted voters, journalists and campaigners to be able to check a legislator in seconds - on the phone, at a meeting or on the doorstep - rather than search a long document. The app had to present roughly 100 notable bills of the 89th General Assembly, each legislator's votes on them and AAI's rating, without losing accuracy or context.

What we built

We built a native iPhone and iPad app that makes the scorecard browsable in two directions:

• By legislator - a photo, district map, overall rating and every rated vote with the bill it concerned.
• By bill category - the six scorecard categories, showing how the chamber voted on each notable bill.
• District maps so a user can find their own representative quickly.
• Bill detail - what the bill was, how each legislator voted and how AAI scored that vote.

The data model separated legislators, districts, bills and votes, so a new scorecard edition could be loaded without an app update.

Process & timeline

We started from the scorecard itself: mapping the report's structure into screens, agreeing the navigation with AAI, then building and testing against the full data set to make sure every vote and rating matched the published report.

Results

AAI got a sleek, accurate mobile version of its scorecard that people could carry into conversations about their legislators. The client's verdict: "I was very pleased with every aspect of Magora's work. Highest rating." - Dan Greenberg.

The scorecard moved from a long report to something people could check in seconds, which made it far easier for AAI to put its ratings in front of voters.

At our current rates, a build of this scope would cost about £12–25k — an estimate from the feature list, not the original invoice.

If we built it today

Today we would load the scorecard from a structured data feed, so each new edition goes live the same day it is published, and add search by postcode to find your own representatives. A web version alongside the app would make every legislator's record shareable by link. A first release of a product like this typically takes 6–8 weeks; our rates start from £49/hour per developer, and £65–£70/hour for a full team with QA and product ownership. Discovery starts from £3,000.

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