On April 17, 2013, 45 U.S. Senators voted to block the passing of the Manchin-Toomey bill to enact common sense gun control legislation that was supported by 90% of American voters. We were outraged, and we needed to do something about it. We created TheyDon'tWorkForYou.org, a tool for digital activism. This project was selected for the AIGA Justified competition in 2014.
We began by distilling a very noisy conversation into its core truth: these senators voted the way they did because they don't work for the American people. They work for the NRA, who works for the gun industry whose sole purpose is to sell more guns.
We needed to make it easy to share this clear, provocative message for the millions of people who felt the same way we did. We wanted our voices heard.
Leveraging the power of design and HTML5, we created a responsive platform to hold these senators accountable for their votes. Each senator who voted no on the bill was paired with a child whose life could have been saved in the last year if we had better gun control laws.
The website is a direct call to action, a next generation tool for digital activism. Each page contained the senators name, phone number, and links to their Facebook and Twitter pages. Clicking on the Twitter button reveals a pre-filled message, asking the senator why they weren't working to protect these children.
They Don't Work For You was created in 4 long days and launched on Monday April 22nd. In 2 days we had 30,000 unique visitors to the site and by Friday, over 80,000. We were featured on AdWeek, FastCo, MSNBC's Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris-Perry and were interviewed live on The War Room.
We watched in real time via Tweet Deck as tens of thousands of people scrolled through all 45 slides and tweeted to every single senator. People took to Facebook, posting the website on their senators pages, asking them why they weren't working for them.
TheyDontWorkForYou.org was optimized for mobile devices, so if you are viewing the site from a smartphone, a tap of each phone number puts you directly in touch with each senator.
The success of They Don't Work For You illustrates how powerful a clear message, straight forward UI, and provocative design can be. We were thoroughly humbled by this experience, and proud to help facilitate the continuation of an important and necessary conversation on such a massive scale.
What people are saying about They Don't Work For You:
“They wanted us to feel the full weight of grief that each of these families feel.”Melissa Harris-Perry
“A powerful interactive slideshow depicting the faces of gun violence and the 45 senators who voted against doing something about it.”Chris Hayes
“The website gets under your skin using deceptively simple, exceptionally skillful Web design and the frequently overlooked (yet often quite powerful) tactic of repetition.”Ad Week
“It’s a website designed to make you mad.”FastCo Exist
