A month of presentations

We’ve been out talking about how design makes a difference in elections and civic life. We know election officials are interested in this, but there’s also a growing movement of people – user experience designers and researchers – who want to put their skills to work making the world a better place. These 6 talks covered both election and design audiences and thousands of miles:

• Designing paper ballots that ensure voter intent
• Designing for language access
• Working effectively with poll workers
• Writing so voters understand
• Mapping the voter journey
• Talking civic design with user experience designers and developers

1. Designing paper ballots that ensure voter intent

Using paper ballots is an important step in being able to verify and audit an election. But you can’t just slap any old design on paper and expect it to do it’s job. Like almost everything else about designing elections, paper ballots need careful attention to details to ensure that voters mark them as they intend and can check them for accuracy before they cast them. Whitney gave this presentation to the NASEM Committee on the Future of Voting as part of a panel on challenges to access for all.

Fun fact: the meeting took place in the building where her parents voted when she was growing up in New York City.

2. Designing for language access

We’re doing more and more work on multi-language election materials, so we’ve started to gather best practices on designing in more than one language. Taapsi was on the program at the EAC Language Access for Voters Summit leading a workshop with Stacey Scholl from Democracy Fund and Priscilla Huang, former White House senior advisor. You can see her slides online or watch the video of the session. The full white paper is on our language access project page.

3. Working effectively with poll workers

A few years ago, we did some research on the role of poll workers in election integrity. That work taught us how important it is to have great procedures that let each team of poll workers take pride in their election and responsibility for how the election goes in their polling place. We’ve been working with Virginia ELECT and the local registrars to improve forms like the statement of results. Dana gave this talk at their annual training conference.

4. Writing so voters understand

We think plain language is an election design superpower, so we’re always happy to share with any election officials any time how to write for voters who don’t read carefully, don’t read well, or don’t read English well. Whitney, Maggie, and Taapsi all headed to… Ocean City, MD to join the Maryland Association of Election Officials in a workshop on plain language (and to give away some Field Guides).

5. Mapping the voter journey

We’ve been thinking about the journey a voter takes from thinking about an election to actually voting. Maggie introduced this work with a poster showing the epic journey of  American voters.

Dana traveled to Edinburgh and the UX Scotland conference to talk about how we used the user experience technique of journey mapping to understand the complexity of voting, and just how much research we had to do to get our arms around the voter experience. (We’re still learning about the voter experience. This work will probably never be done. But in the meantime…) We love how this mapping helps people who aren’t election geeks get how hard good election administration is.

6. Talking civic design with user experience designers and developers

Whitney took a trip to Warsaw. Besides revisiting a theatre venue where she worked on a performance in her youth, and a great morning talking about ensuring access to elections with the election observation team at the OSCE Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, she spent a few days at the MCE: Positive Tech conference for designers and developers energized by using technology for positive change. Her talk focused on how designing for government is different than designing a commercial app. But those differences don’t mean that we can’t delight citizens.

 

And a shoutout to Tammy Patrick for this photo from the Missouri Urban Election Boards Conference, showing ballot designs for ranked choice voting