Think Design goes off-line and in person to introduce voter information mobile app Palumba on NYC early voting weekend
Think Design Team put thoughts and ideas to action this weekend by introducing the Palumba app to civic minded voters at Middle Church in the Lower East Side, Manhattan. The response was positive with many folks excited to test how their answers matched with the mayoral candidates. Think Design took note of the many requests for the Palumba app to cover the ballot proposals and be nationwide.
Swipe right for…NYC Mayor?
New York City residents now have an easy tool at their fingertips to decode how candidates stand on city issues without all the noise! The app comes hyperbole-free, bluster-free, ad-free and free of charge.
Palumba has been the #1 elections app and leading civic engagement platform in Europe, using an evidence-based transparent algorithm to help match voters with candidates that share their values, while providing educational context for every issue.
So what is Palumba?
Palumba is Europe’s leading civic engagement platform. Through an engaging, nonpartisan platform, Palumba makes political complexity accessible and voting decisions informed.
Palumba reached #1 in App Stores across multiple European countries during the 2024 EU Elections, engaged nearly 200,000 users, collected over 5 million individual responses, earned 100+ media mentions, and won 10+ awards including from Google, UN World Summit Awards, Columbia University or the Innovation in Politics Award.
How Palumba Works
Swipe, Learn, Match: Users express opinions on 25-30 policy statements by swiping left/right. Our transparent algorithm matches them with candidates who share their values while providing educational context for every issue.
Evidence-Based Content: Each policy question includes background information, fact-checking, and links to reliable sources. Each statement is verified by our Scientific Council of academic experts and by the mayoral campaign teams.
Social Virality: Built-in sharing features naturally spread civic engagement through social networks and hook the attention of users across generations to what matters.
Palumba x Who’s On the Ballot
For the November 2025 NYC Mayoral Election, Palumba NYC partnered with Columbia SIPA’s “Who’s On The Ballot”, founded by Professor Esther Fuchs, to create a comprehensive digital voting companion for NY’s voters.
WOTB will prominently feature a link to Palumba. Palumba will direct voters to WOTB . Jointly, the two initiatives will target a larger audience and maximize impact.
Palumba x Think Design: Mobile Flutter development
The Palumba and Think Design teams conducted daily stand-ups for two weeks beginning in late September, and within three weeks, with a significant push from both teams, Palumba NYC was made available in both Apple and Google play stores.
Think Design provided custom software development, in Flutter, for the front end of the app, where extensive changes were needed to customize the app from an EU context to one more suited to NYC.
This work involved extending and adapting the open-source Palumba voter engagement app for a New York City launch. Front-end work in Flutter included updating onboarding, borough and education data, issue prompts, and results pages; incorporating NYC-centric visuals; and tailoring content for NYC’s mayoral election and younger voters.
Why This Matters
Youth Disengagement Crisis: In the last NYC Mayoral Elections, only 11% of young people voted. In the long term, studies show that voting in your first elections is decisive for future civic participation and Palumba NYC’s mission focuses on that.
Information Overload: Complex ballot structures and candidate positions overwhelm first-time and occasional voters. The cognitive burden and learning curves are a barrier to engagement.
Proven Impact: Voting Advice Applications show measurable increases of as much as 4% in election turnout when they’re widely used, and its effects have been proven to be significantly high in increasing political literacy among typically disengaged demographics.