Alumni develop app to inform 2016 voters
Rice University alumni Kevin Ting (Hanszen ’12) and Jennifer Shen (Hanszen ’14) have been working to develop an app, called Soapbox, designed to help inform voters about the 2016 presidential election. The app, which the alumni created for Android and iOS, has already been launched and has around 500 downloads so far.
The app provides a short biography about all the presidential candidates for the 2016 election along with the live Twitter feed of political news. Upon downloading the app, you take a quiz that will tell you how much you match with the political stances of each candidate based on answers to 14 statements regarding political issues.
Ting said he started the project because he realized how uninformed the general populace is about the candidates in elections.
“After the 2014 midterm elections, I chatted with a few friends and realized that none of us voted, a big reason being that we were woefully uninformed even with the flood of campaign advertisements leading up to the elections,” he said. “From there, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was an app which we could use for a few minutes and come out feeling informed? It was that moment that inspired us to build Soapbox.”
Ting and Shen were hallmates at Hanszen College and stayed in touch after graduating from Rice. After Ting came up with the idea, he reached out to Shen for her software engineering talent. Shen said working on the app brought challenges, but they were able to work through them with the support of Ting and the team.
“One big challenge was to keep focused on the project throughout the year that we worked on it, especially since we were all working on the project on the side in addition to our jobs,” Shen said. “I think one of the main reasons we were able to pull through was Kevin’s leadership.”
The team, which consisted of Ting, Shen and four others, started the project in Feb. 2015 and finished the app in one year. After completing the app, Ting said he enjoyed seeing the app take off.
“Soapbox was an unbelievable learning experience,” Ting said. “Seeing the downloads rack up and getting great reviews, comments and support from all our users was the most rewarding for me.”
Ting and Shen said they hope to work on including local elections and making push notifications for the app, though the presidential race is the current focus.
“I hope that at the end of the day, Soapbox will have helped engage and bring some new information to millennials about the election,” Shen said.
To learn more about Soapbox and download the app, visit soapboxapp.info.
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