I can add another few thoughts to this discussion. After working for nearly 15 years as a voting official, I became a UX professional. Somehow, I couldn't leave this voting thing alone, though, and I've worked with Dana, UPA, Design for Democracy and Brennan on projects. In addition to all of the excellent reasons already given by Jared and Dana, here are a few more thoughts:
-- Even though you entrust your money to the ATM machine, you know that you can audit the veracity of your transaction at any time from multiple locations (bank, phone, Web to name a few). A voting system cannot allow you the same opportunity. -- Voting systems have an even higher mandate with regard to reading and understanding. (In other words, the best system can be voted with confidence by the nearly illiterate.) -- It is easy to underestimate the most important satisfaction metric of all: that a vote has been voted properly (as intended), recorded and stored safely, and that each vote was counted as the voter intended. The part about being counted as intended gives us apparently conflicting requirements: -- My vote must be flawlessly secret -- Vote counting must be flawlessly transparent Now, let's add that literacy challenge...and the multiple language challenge (ok, ATMs do this piece well, I think) and the access challenge. Yep, this system has to be accessible by nearly every standard you can imagine: vision, hearing, mobility...even cognition. So, how do you design this system? Most of the heated discussion about voting surrounds the design problem posed by these considerations. I think it is easy to make an ATM style voting system, but not one that meets all of these needs. What makes voting a greater design problem is the other little item: every citizen in a democracy must know that their vote was secret and that counting is transparent. I have to know with reasonable assurance that my vote was counted properly, and I have the right to vote without influence. No easy task. Next time you vote, hug your clerk. She's doing great work. Josie Scott ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
