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Barlaman Shuaib

Website for an interactive community and rights programme built around a parliament its audience elects.

2020 Frontend Development

The public votes in a people’s parliament. It takes on the problems of the Arab region and proposes solutions that reflect what the majority actually thinks.

The rules of the chamber: dialogue, working together, saying what you think. No exclusion, no extremism.

Built at Syntax, where I worked as a front-end developer. My role on this project was the front end.

THE CALL FOR CANDIDATES

Before there could be a parliament there had to be candidates. A countdown to nominations, a video on how to run, and the rules written out: twelve elected seats, three committees.

Two pages side by side: a nominations page with a countdown, a host at a podium and an animated pop-up book of history; and the About page setting out the parliament’s structure and its three committees

IN SESSION

Every session puts one question to the chamber, then to everyone watching. The members’ vote and the public’s vote sit one above the other, so you can see when they disagree.

The homepage asking whether women should be able to pass their citizenship to their children, with past sessions below; and a session page with its video, the members’ 6 to 6 vote and the public’s 205 to 230 vote

CASTING A VOTE

Pick a candidate from your region, filtered by country, interests and age. Two votes per region, and the ballot box in the header counts what you have left.

Candidate cards for the Gulf and Yemen region, each with a photo, age, country, vote count and campaign slogan, under filters for country, interests and age and a counter showing 0 of 2 votes used

THE CHAMBER

Shuaib chairs; the elected members sit grouped by region. Alongside runs an animated series in which Shuaib travels through history trying to build a democracy.

Two pages side by side: the parliament’s members grouped by region under Shuaib as president; and the animated series, a grid of eight episodes

CHOOSE YOUR REGION

The Arab world split into five voting regions. Hover one to see how many candidates are running there.

A map of the Arab world coloured into five voting regions, with a tooltip on the Gulf and Yemen showing its number of candidates

RESPONSIVE

Ten mobile screens: the region list, a 404 page with Shuaib, the vote dialog, the vote confirmation, the members, a member’s profile, a new episode and the candidate list

THE OBSESSING PART

Every project here has a detail nobody asked for and nobody will spot. I fixed it anyway. Bring me one more.