Tuesday November 07, 2006

State of California Voting Experience Case Study

Did you vote today?

User experience design is about designing the ENTIRE experience a person has with a product, exhibit, or thing.

The State of California voting experience starts when a voter recieves their voting pamphlets in the mail. Its ends when they get their little sticker that says they voted.

I voted today at my local fire station and - given the length of the line - observed several patterns of behavior. This admittedly unscientific observation (even if done by an expert observer) provided some immediate insights into the problems still facing the voting public.

The first issue comes about when you recieve your pamphlet in the mail. In general, the layout of the material has steadily improved in the last several years. There are clear summaries of the propositions, good use of typefaces and headers, etc.

The problem lies in the heart of the booklet - what I call the mock voting ballot. All the candidates and propositions are listed on this mock ballet and most folks mark this up with their choices ahead of time and take it with them to the polls. A very useful beast in California, the land of MANY propositions.

The mock voting ballot was put into the middle of the pamphlet like regular pages yet were not printed out like standard pages. Instead of being printed in an 8.5 X 11 page format like the rest of the booklet, they were printed in an 11 X 14 page format and folded in the middle and put into the book sideways. mistake one.

No title page or instructions were provided as to what these pages were or what to do with them. Mistakes two and three.

I discovered after examining these pages several times that the only coherent way to deal with them was to take both pages out and read them as 11 X 14 pages. The pages were otherwise entirely confusing and unusable. Most other folks I was able to observe at the polls did not do this.

The second issue came from the mapping of the mock voting ballot to the ballot display on the touch-entry voting machines. Or, more correctly, the complete and utter lack of a coherent mapping between the two. Sigh.

Even when one takes out the pages, the mapping between the mock ballot and the machine is less then optimal and results in quite a bit of flipping paper over and over - and dropping it on the ground.

When one does not take the pages out, it can clearly result in failure.

An elderly couple had started voting as I joined the line. They each were at a machine and were desparately trying to map between what they had written on the mock ballot to the display. Add in the factor that they were struggling a bit to read the display and the mock ballot - eyeglass adjustments and leaning were observed repeatedly. The lady could not get the touch input to work. A stylus was supplied.

She had trouble finding her notes on a proposition - much page flipping of the mock ballot which was still in the booklet and comparing with the display. This resulted in her walking over and interupting her husband several times. He walked back and they worked to figure out what she wanted to vote and how to make that happen. Then he would walk back to his machine and work on his voting. And so it went.

By the time I went up to vote, 20 minutes later, this couple was still trying to complete their vote. I ended up at the machine between them. The gentleman was clearly getting angry and frustrated. The lady was bewildered. The election workers were gently trying to step in and offer help. I completed my voting and they were still trying to complete theirs. And the gentleman's machine had timed out as he was at his wife's trying to help her.

This is a great example of a user experience that isn't. I will not point fingers or blame. Instead I hope it improves by the time I turn 80 years old.

[evil laugh]

( Nov 07 2006, 12:58:27 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]