Design and Democracy: Week 2

Redesigning the U.S. absentee ballot: user research

This just the smallest selection of absentee ballot paperwork I saw this week.

This is Week 2 of Design and Democracy, where I’m keeping track of a design project I’m doing for a class at Berkeley. You can find the introduction to this project here.

Week 2’s assignment focused on user research:

1. Refine project scope.
2. Develop a research plan.
3. Execute that research plan.
4. Analyze findings from research.

Refining the project scope

As I discussed last week, I’ll be exploring the absentee voting experience, as absentee voting is the subspace that I’m personally most familiar with and a subspace with little to no existing redesign work. Millions of Americans use the absentee voting system to cast their votes, and the validity of their votes should not be threatened by a flawed absentee voting system.

Planning for research

In developing a research plan, I had some goals, as well as some constraints, to keep in mind.

Regarding goals, I wanted to understand how people generally perceive voting in the U.S, how absentee voters perceive absentee voting, how they interact with an absentee ballot, and how absentee voting varies from state to state.

I also had some constraints with conducting user research. I began planning for research a little less than a week before the general November election, so I had to work quickly to develop a research plan in order to conduct in-person contextual interviews with absentee voters, as ballot deadlines were either on or before November 8. Because of time constraints, I was only able to conduct two contextual interviews — I understand that my user research is not comprehensive, and that’s something I’ll need to take into account later on in my design process.

Contextual interviews

Ballot contents from New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and California

I conducted two contextual interviews with two college students, one who votes absentee in Pennsylvania, and another who votes absentee in New Mexico. I sat with each interviewee individually, asked some general questions, then observed each voter as they opened their absentee ballots, went through them, voted, and repackaged them to be mailed back to their respective home counties.

Throughout each interview, I photographed pieces of each ballot — doing so truly displayed how different voting is in each state. Ballots came in different envelope sizes, some were significantly shorter, others color coded different pages, and the differences go on and on.

Analyzing findings from research

Sorting through low-level observations from contextual interviews, with post-its and with Trello

After conducting the two contextual interviews, I had plenty of observations to sort though. I affinity mapped all the low-level observations I collected, and then used Trello to help synthesize my research. From my research, there were some interesting key observations, as well as key insights:

Key observations

1. Both interviewees mentioned discomfort (“strange” “nervous”) with having to fill out the absentee ballot in pen. For one interviewee, using a pen was particularly strange because filling out the ballot was reminiscent of taking a standardized test.
2. Both interviewees also mentioned straight-party voting. The PA ballot had straight-party voting, while the NM ballot did not. The voter from NM talked about how straight-party voting could be dangerous.
3. Both interviewees had trouble receiving their absentee ballots — either the first one didn’t arrive, or the ballot arrived late. In particular, the PA ballot arrived in California the Thursday before election day, and the ballot was due back at the county clerk the Friday before election day.
4. Interestingly, the PA ballot had all democratic candidates for positions listed first. The interviewee specifically pointed this out to me.
5. The PA voter specifically mentioned to me that they would not have seen the ballot measure on the back of their ballot, and that some of the text was pretty small, potentially being an issue for voters with visual impairments.

Across multiple observations, I also gathered some key insights from my research.

First, people value the security and privacy of an absentee ballot. Both interviewees made some comments about changes that could be made to the ballot, but both also conceded that some of their suggested changes would potentially get in the way of the privacy or security of the ballot.

Additionally, people stress about the postal system, especially in regards to absentee voting. Voters don’t like it when ballots are sent late, and they worry that the ballots won’t arrive back in their home counties in time. With my interviewees specifically, their ballots being sent late gave both of them some level of nervousness or stress.

Lastly, people care about making informed decisions when voting. While voters understand that they could search the internet for information about ballots, both interviewees mentioned that they would appreciate a trusted, non-partisan source of information about ballot measures or candidates.

With the observations and insights I collected this week, along with secondary research on absentee voting and examples of absentee ballots from a handful of different states, I’ll be working on ideation and early prototypes for week 3. Moving forward, I’ll be developing and refining solutions to some of the problems with absentee voting in the United States.

I’ll (hopefully) be posting weekly as I go through research, ideation, iteration, and refinement of my project, Design and Democracy. Feedback is always welcome and appreciated!