Debora Serracchiani is one of the new faces of italian politics. After a passionate speech at the Italian democratic party congress a few month ago, she played the outsider at the European elections and won in her district with an impressive number of preferences. But politics are not the topic of this space.

The thing is, Debora has put up a pretty interesting website. The credits say that it was developed during a workshop held by IED (the European Design Institute).

IED students were great in delivering a fresh website, very far in concept from the dull political websites which are often house for even duller press releases and leave a narrow space for conversation.

Casa Serracchiani is built like a tour of Debora’s house. Each room is a metaphor for a different politic perspective; for example, in the bedroom Debora collects, in form of a tagcloud, all the dreams of her supporters; in the studio she explains her politic program and in the bathroom she collects messages from her fans.
A special mention for the kitchen: here Debora presents some funny recipes which are a quite playful way to point out some issues of the country, as in the “green economy salad”, where she takes a strong position for renewable and clean energy.

This site is a perfect example on how a good playful design can be applied even to serious sites. The explorative metaphor and the sense of surprise that the user get in how the topics are presented help to maintain the attention high, and the messages, short but striking, stick in the visitor’s mind.

Kudos to the team, this is a great job.