Volunteer App Tester — Help Improve Innovative AI Communication Tools

About The Work

Crossing Party Lines has spent nearly a decade developing and teaching ways to help people with different political views understand one another without requiring agreement. Our approach addresses two related challenges: affective depolarization (the distrust, dislike, fear, and hostility people may feel toward those on the “other side”) and cognitive depolarization (the assumptions, oversimplifications, reasoning habits, and distorted perceptions that make it harder to understand people and issues accurately). Our AI applications combine generative-AI technology with CPL’s proprietary communication skills, teaching methods, concepts, and philosophy. The goal is to bring what we have learned beyond political conversations and into workplaces, families, community groups, and other areas of everyday life. Crossing Party Lines is also preparing an application to Y Combinator as we explore how these tools could reach and serve a much larger audience.

What you’ll help us accomplish

Your feedback will help us answer questions such as:

• Are the instructions easy to understand?
• Does the AI respond in a useful and appropriate way?
• Does the experience feel supportive rather than judgmental?
• Can people understand why a skill or suggestion might help?
• Does the app work for people with different communication styles and viewpoints?
• What happens when someone gives an unexpected, emotional, vague, or complicated response?
• Where do people become confused, frustrated, bored, or tempted to leave?
• Does the app teach something people can use outside the app?

What you’ll do

Depending on the stage of each project, you may:

• Test early prototypes and more developed applications
• Follow structured testing scenarios
• Explore applications freely to uncover unexpected problems
• Test different inputs, viewpoints, tones, and conversational situations
• Document bugs, confusing instructions, awkward interactions, and inconsistent behavior
• Evaluate whether AI responses feel accurate, neutral, respectful, and helpful
• Suggest improvements to wording, workflow, coaching, and user experience
• Participate in team discussions about what should be changed
• Retest revised versions to see whether problems have been resolved
• Help us develop repeatable testing criteria for future applications

Some testing will focus on whether the technology works correctly. Other testing will focus on the quality of the conversation, teaching, coaching, and overall experience.

You may be a good fit if you

• Notice details and enjoy figuring out why something does or does not work
• Can describe problems clearly and specifically
• Are willing to try unfamiliar tools and experiment with different approaches
• Can separate personal preference from a genuine usability or product issue
• Are interested in communication, psychology, conflict resolution, education, civic life, product development, or responsible AI
• Are comfortable engaging with perspectives different from your own
• Can provide candid feedback respectfully
• Are dependable and able to complete agreed-upon testing assignments

Experience in software quality assurance, usability testing, product management, research, education, facilitation, or communications is helpful but not required. We are interested in testers with different ages, backgrounds, political perspectives, communication styles, and levels of technical comfort. A diverse testing group will help us build stronger products.

What you’ll gain

• Early access to innovative AI-based communication applications
• Experience testing generative-AI products and conversational agents
• An opportunity to influence products while they are still being shaped
• Practice identifying and documenting usability and AI-quality issues
• Collaboration with a multidisciplinary team
• Exposure to CPL’s communication and depolarization frameworks
• Professional references based on the quality and consistency of your work

Time, location, and support

This is a remote volunteer position, and most testing can be completed on your own schedule. We hope volunteers can contribute approximately 8 or more hours per week, although hours are flexible. Volunteers should also be available for one or two online team meetings per week. You will report to Lisa Swallow, co-founder of Crossing Party Lines and lead of the Apps and Agents team. We will provide instructions, testing assignments, background information, and tools for recording findings.