Voting and Usability Double-Shot
This week was a good week for usability and voting. The New York Times ran an editorial about the importance of usability testing when deploying new voting systems, and BusinessWeek.com reviewed the book “Design for Democracy” by Marcia Lausen. Marcia is one of the leaders of the AIGA’s Design For Democracy initiative.
Several people from my “home” professional association, the Usability Professionals’ Association, also participated in D4D. One of them is Whitney Quesenbery, who leads the UPA’s efforts in this area through the UPA’s “Usability In Civic Life” program.
A Lesson Not Learned :: New York Times
Design for Democracy Solves Election Problems :: BusinessWeek.com
Blogged with the Flock Browser
October 19th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Lawmakers have the authority to determine instructional guidelines for ballots. When these are determined at the local and state level, how do we consistently lobby for change? I would love to see federal guidelines based on Design for Democracy and EAC best practices: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/design-for-democracy-eac-reports. Although just getting started in the fight for ballot usability, I am overwhelmed by the concern that ballots are not standard.