ECAS invited me to a hackathon in Leuven where 27 designers and thinkers were randomly teamed up to strengthen democracy through design.
Paired with Sebnem Yardimci-Geyikci, who understood political party dynamics, and Pavel Ruzyak, who lived the reality of democratic exclusion for impaired citizens, I confronted my own bias:
I'd always seen political parties as the problem. This weekend, I learned they might be the most underused lever for change.
The insight that shaped OpenParty: political parties still hold real power, but they've lost touch with grassroots participation.
What if we could transform them from closed clubs into bridges—connecting with citizens not through campaigns, but through everyday community life?
I designed OpenParty to match impaired youth organizing local events (like a visually impaired student hosting an accessibility meetup) with parties whose values align, creating authentic engagement on both sides.
Building for visually, hearing, and mentally impaired users forced me to rethink every assumption about interfaces.
How does someone organize an event if they can't see a form, hear instructions, or process complex navigation?
I created parallel interaction models: audio-first flows using ElevenLabs voice SDKs for blind users, text-first pathways for the deaf, and simplified step-by-step logic for cognitive accessibility—ensuring confidence and autonomy at every stage.
Working under hackathon constraints, I leaned heavily on Cursor, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and Figma to move fast.
The AI tools let me prototype interaction patterns and generate accessible code in real-time while I focused on the human logic—what does empowerment actually feel like for a 19-year-old who's been excluded from civic spaces their entire life?
The result was a live, functional demo that proved the concept could work in the real world.
Will OpenParty become a real platform? Maybe.
But what matters more is the question it asks: How do we make better decisions together?
This project taught me that inclusive democracy isn't about giving everyone the same tool—it's about meeting people where they are, with the interfaces and support structures they actually need.
That's the problem I'll keep designing for.
