A year-and-a-half in review: Center for Civic Design 2016-2017

This has been a big year and a half.

We’re growing, with new staff. We added Maggie Ollove and Taapsi Ramchandani to our ranks, bringing their backgrounds in service design and anthropology to our projects. You might have met Maggie running workshops on forms design with General Registrars in Virginia, or seen Taapsi’s presentation at the EAC Language Access Summit in June. They join our long-time collaborators at Oxide Design, Kathryn Summers at University of Baltimore, and Nancy Frishberg, who is now working with us on a grant to develop a cloud-based accessibility tool.

We’re growing with new projects. If we thought that 2017 would be a quiet year, we were wrong. Our focus on improving the voter journey—from automatic voter registration to casting a ballot (usably, accessibly, securely) and all the details informed voters need in between—hasn’t wavered.

Democracy is a design problem

Our goal is summed up in our slogan, “democracy is a design problem,” and the opening words of our site:

Ensuring voter intent through design
Our goal is to make every interaction between government and citizens easy, effective, and pleasant.

We believe that our research and skills in usability, design, accessibility, and plain language can help improve elections for all.

Over and over again, our research suggests that the voter journey is a story of seemingly small barriers that can add up to a vote not cast. It is made of all of the information, decisions, interactions with election administration, and dozens of small and large actions a voter takes to get from an intention to vote to actually casting a ballot.  By smoothing out those barriers, our work can help more people vote, increasing participation in democracy.

Working on a deeper understanding of election design

Design touches many areas of elections and so do our projects, which we organize into 4 program areas, which are now featured on the home page of our website:

We continue to look for a mix of projects that push the boundaries of what we know with research in new areas, and projects that allow us to apply our insights and guidelines into real projects in advocacy or election administration.

Collaborating with advocates and election officials

Collaboration is an important part of our approach. As important as research and design is, it is never the whole project. When we work with partners and users, we can contribute to larger projects than we can manage on our own. This gives us opportunities to expand our reach and embed our design principles deeper in our partner organizations. Two examples, from the Knight Election Challenge grants:

Center for Technology and Civic Life and ElectionTools.org – It was a great experience to work with CTCL on the design, usability, accessibility, and development of this site, which had its first birthday in June 2017.  We helped them bring their vision of a toolkit for voter engagement to life, but we benefit from it as well. Several tools are based on our work, including a workbook for usability testing, the web site template, and the civic images library, so the site provides a way for our work to be more broadly available and have even more impact.  Whitney is now on the CTCL Advisory Committee.

DemocracyWorks and e.ThePeople  – We learned so much about how to help people become informed voters as we worked to help refine the TurboVote messages with voter guide links by e.ThePeople, the platform behind vote411.org.

Working with – not just for – election officials

When we work with election officials, we include collaboration and project-based training and workshops. This way, when we leave they not only have better-designed materials but have added to their own skills. They develop capacity so they can continue to improve the design of their elections, on their own.

Jurisdictions we have worked with

In California we engaged 45 (of 58)  counties during our work on voter guides, with more intensive work with our partners Orange, Santa Cruz, and Shasta counties, and additional work with Inyo, Los Angeles, Madera, Nevada, San Mateo, and Yuba counties. What we learned from this project is summarized in Designing a voter guide to an election, a new “super-Field Guide” (available online only). Other jurisdictions we have collaborated with  include:

Colorado  |   Connecticut   |   Cook County    |    Hillsborough, FL   |   Minnesota   |  New Jersey   |   New York   |   Oregon   |    Pennsylvania   |   Rhode Island   |      Virginia    |   Washington  |   Wisconsin  |   Elections Canada

Jurisdictions using our tools and templates

Through the Field Guides, ElectionTools.org, our presentations, and interviews conducted for our research or cross-state projects, we have reached every state in the country. We have received reports or seen evidence of materials created by the Center for Civic Design in use in elections from Hawaii to Maine.

  • The Center for Technology in Civic Life reports that web analytics from ElectionTools.org include visits from all 50 states.
  • We have not kept track with every jurisdiction that requested copies of the Field Guides to Ensuring Voter Intent, but they have been given out at state conferences in Washington, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, New York and others. We have also distributed Field Guides at NASS and NASED meetings, so we are confident that they have touched election officials at every level, in every state, territory, and protectorate.
  • We have presented at most of the national election organizations including IACREOT and NACRC (now iGO), the Election Center, NASED, and the EAC Technical Guidelines Development Committee and NIST symposiums. And we are always happy for an invitation to any local election event.

What we are working on now

Every election cycle brings new challenges, so our projects evolve to meet those challenges. This year, for example, we have added work on automatic voter registration, designing for language access, materials for poll workers in new vote centers, and design for ranked choice voting that we expect to continue for several years.

Our current work and projects we are developing for the near future are balanced in the 4 program areas.

Informed voters

  • Understanding voter registration. Complementing our election design work on automatic voter registration, we are conducting research to learn how members of language communities understand the process and questions in voter registration.
  • Notices and other communication. As part of a grant from Future of California Elections (FOCE), we are writing plain language templates for the many required forms and notifications to voters.

Election design

  • Teaching at the Election Academy. We teach the first-in-the-nation Election Design course at the University of Minnesota as part of the Certificate in Election Administration. The next presentation will be in the Spring of 2018, when we look forward to introducing a new group of people to best practices in election design.
  • Vote-by-mail package design. In a deep dive into a critical piece of election design, we are designing a template for envelopes and other vote-by-mail package materials in California so that they are easy to recognize, work well for the US Postal Service (with advice from national expert Tammy Patrick), and support election administration. Research with Kathryn Summers at University of Baltimore on designing vote-by-mail materials for people with low civic and reading literacy led to a paper: Making Voting by Mail Usable, Accessible, and Inclusive. Advances for Design in Inclusion – AHFE 2016, Orlando, FL.
  • Best practices for Ranked Choice Voting. We are continuing our work with FairVote on best practices for ranked choice ballot design, voter education, and display of results for single and multi-winner elections. Our initial templates are online at the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center.
  • Designing for language access. We began work on how to design more effectively to support voters with low English proficiency as part of our work for NIST on the voting system guidelines. We are currently investigating sources for funding continued work.
  • Work with election departments. We are finishing a project with VotesPA to revise and restructure the voter-facing web site, and with VirginiaELECT to create new voter education materials and an Absentee Ballot Application.
  • Ballots for Participatory Budgeting. During the 2016 PB election in New York City, we visited polling places to learn what makes these paper and digital ballots work.

Election administration

  • Automatic voter registration. In a continuation of a long relationship with Brennan Center we were introduced to work supporting states in implementing automatic voter registration or updated NVRA compliance. This work started with Oregon and includes work with states from Alaska to Vermont. In California, we are working with an advocacy task force and the Center for Secure and Modern Elections to research issues in language access when voter registration is part of a transaction at a driver’s license center. We also contributed to a publication by Project Vote on Automatic Voter Registration: Two NVRA Compliant Models.
  • Poll worker materials for vote centers. As part of our grant from FOCE, we are working on checklists and other job aids for election workers (both staff and poll workers) for vote centers. This work will build on our 2014 project funded by the National Science Foundation.
  • Work with election departments. With VirginiaELECT, we are working with both the state and the General Registrars on procedural forms such as the Statement of Results.  In Connecticut, we concluded a short project to redesign forms for candidate filing and explanations of voter ID requirements for voters and poll workers.

 

Voting systems

  • Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG 2.0). We have received a series of grants from NIST to do research to support standards and guidance for usability and accessibility of future elections. Our work has helped make the Human Factors and Privacy group leaders in the development of updated standards focused on principles, not just technical requirements.
  • Accessible and secure remote ballot marking systems. This collaboration with NIST, Verified Voting, and the National Federation of the Blind, produced some ground-breaking principles for making remote ballot marking both accessible and secure, bringing together two goals that have often been in conflict.
  • Usability of other voting systems. We had a chance to look at the usability of electronic pollbooks, current and future uses of assistive technologies in the polling place, and  ways to design digital ballots to help voters manage selecting their choices, even on long contests.
  • Los Angeles VSAP and Travis STAR-Vote. We are proud to be on the Technical Advisory Committee for the VSAP project in Los Angeles, and hope to be able to work with both of these innovative projects to create new voting systems.
  • Accessibility preferences for all. Although not strictly an elections project, we are part of a long-time project to “raise the floor” and make it easier for everyone to set preferences, supporting both individual needs and people with disabilities with local or cloud-based preference sets. We believe that if this project is successful, it could be the basis for better accessibility for voters at polling places and interacting with elections offices. A paper, A Tool for Capturing Essential Preferences, was accepted at ASSETS 2016.

Spreading the word

Our work is meant to be used. The more people who know about our research and the basic principles for election design, the better. It’s applied research, after all.

It’s exciting when other people recognize the work. This year the Center for Civic Design and our partners Oxide Design were over the moon when the Field Guides to Ensuring Voter Intent were selected to be part of an exhibition at the Smithsonian. It was an honor to be in the company of so many other amazing projects.

By the People: Designing a better America
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Museum
September 30, 2016 – February 26, 2017
That belongs in a Museum on CivicDesign.org

Press and media, 2016-2017

We also love talking to people in the press, especially thoughtful publications writing about issues in American democracy. Some of the highlights this year are listed below. You can see  the complete list on our website

Democracy Has a Design Problem
“What exactly do you do when you go to a polling place?”
Whitney Quesenbery, The Atlantic (May 17, 2017)

America Has Its Problems, But Design Can Help Solve Them
Liz Stinson and Margaret Rhodes, WIRED (February 1, 2017)

Butterfly Effects: Episode 187
99% Invisible with Roman Mars (November 1, 2015, rebroadcast November 2016)

The Art of the Vote: Who Designs the Ballots We Cast?
Dana Chisnell interviewed on NPR
Weekend Edition Sunday, (November 6, 2016)

Ballot Measures Need to Be Written in Plain Language
Whitney Quesenbery and Dana Chisnell
Room for Debate: Why are ballot measures so confusing
New York Times (November 3, 2016)

Disenfranchised by Bad Design
Lena Groeger. ProPublica (October 20, 2016)

Designing a Better Ballot: Even small tweaks can have a significant effect on an election 
Adrienne LaFrance. The Atlantic (October 5, 2016)

Ballot Design, Looff Hippodrome, Earthquake Preparedness
KCRW’s Design and Architecture, June 7, 2016

Our posts

We  post articles for the election community regularly on the news page at Center for Civic Design.

We also started a new occasional publication on Medium/CivicDesigning with articles that appeal to the general UX audience.

Webinars

Building a civic engagement toolkit for election officials
Government Innovators Network webinar – Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School with Whitney May, Gerri Kramer, Whitney Quesenbery and Hollie Russon Gilman (September 7, 2016)

Designing for Democracy
Future of California Elections webinar with Gail Pellerin, Ben Hamatake, Allison Denofrio, Whitney Quesenbery and Astrid Garcia Ochoa (August 17, 2016)

Democracy is a Design Problem 
Dana Chisnell at TEDNYC 2016
TEDArchive. (November 1, 2016)

Presentations and Elections Meetings, 2016-2017

Our presentations are posted on Slideshare, available to all.

  • Accessibility Camp NYC
  • AccessU (Austin, TX)
  • CACEO New Law (Sacramento, CA)
  • Canada School of Public Service
  • Designing for Digital Libraries (Austin, TX)
  • Design Studio for NIST (Boston)
  • EAC Language Access Summit (Washington DC)
  • EAC Security and Accessibility Summit (Washington DC)
  • Election Center (Savannah, GA)
  • EVN Conference Washington DC)
  • Future of California Elections
  • GET Summit (San Francisco)
  • IA Summit (Vancouver, Canada)
  • MCE Positive Tech (Warsaw, Poland)
  • Maryland Association of Election Officials (Ocean City, MD)
  • Meeting of the Minds (Richmond, VA)
  • NASEM Committee on the future of voting (New York)
  • National Association of Government Webmasters (NAGW) (San Diego, CA)
  • PhillyCHI (Philadelphia, PA)
  • TurboVote Challenge 2018 Summit (Washington DC)
  • UX Research London
  • UX Scotland
  • UX Strategy Workshop (Ontario, Canada)
  • Virginia ELECT (Richmond, VA)
  • VSAP Technical Advisory Committee (Los Angeles, LA)
  • Webstock (New Zealand)

We also continue to distribute printed copies of the Field Guides to Ensuring Voter Intent at all conferences where we appear or where they are requested. Almost 1000 sets have been distributed since our last printing in late 2015. (We have another 500 in stock. Get in touch if you want them for your elections office).