site-wide enhancements to info display & new features

[davidmooreppf]

Big-picture list of enhancements for volunteers to tackle - on our open-source, non-profit platform!

Briefest background: AskThem was conceived primarily as a "We the People" for every U.S. elected official, and secondarily for public figures with verified Twitter accounts. Stakeholder research showed that verifying a question-asker as a constituent was usually necessary to solicit a response, so UI put visitors through an address-or-ZIP-lookup funnel before asking a question. Data limitations on elected official info played a role in what we were able to develop with tech lead @walter, who's been incredible.

Goals below are towards making it easier for new visitors to find their question target and publish through a question, outside of the address-lookup funnel - relevant for user stories around, say, the Presidential debates and major Twitter accounts.

1. On homepage, sitewide search for question recipients by name. If selected, go to question-asking page, or see 2 below, if a question-field on that page is possible. If elected official w/ frequent name, they may require disambiguation. If a Twitter target in database, go to AskThem page; If Twitter target not already in database, ideally app would add that question recipient, as it does now from question-asking process.
2. On question recipient pages, display a text box for 100 character questions to that entity, which then after entered flips to an email entry field. Question would display immediately but be nuked within 24 hours or less if email address isn't verified. Follow-up email from app would need to direct email recipient to /users/sign_up to complete registration. Optional, sign-in buttons with FB & Twitter & G+.
3. Currently, elected official data is populated by a variety of API calls - hence, elected pages are in three tabs, for federal and state and city. Goal is to display all available elected officials in a state, e.g. WI, on a page, so visitors can find their target by scrolling to name. If a major U.S. city doesn't have municipal electeds, goal is to offer a link to a process to submit them to our data partners.
4. Easier UI for asking electeds to become AskThem verified, free of charge.
5. Dynamic signature thresholds, tied to population of relevant jurisdiction - a stretch goal, with some data analysis components.
6. SEO enhancements for state legislator names, pegged to Google Analytics results.

Input welcome on above priorities.