Ensuring the Usability of Voting Systems – UPA 2004 Workshop

This workshop, at UPA 2004 in Minneapolis, looked at the social, civic and methodology issues in ensuring the usability of voting systems and new voting concepts currently being trialed. Participants considered the issue of e-voting/e-participation through the lens of usability and user-centered design. The workshop looked at:

  • Understanding the voting context
    Including voters, but also elections officials, party representatives, maintenance and operations staff, politicians and the poll workers, as well as the political system.
  • Usability and design methods for voting systems
    The usability toolkit is a large one, with methods that range from direct observation to gathering information from secondary sources. As we look at the model of the voting experience, we believe that some methods are more appropriate than others.
  • Ethics and Process
    Many of the people working in the field have worked at some time for a vendor, or another party that creates the potential for conflicts of interest. What are appropriate ethical guidelines for people working in this field?

Voting and elections is a complex topic. Our goal was to bring together people from around the world to share their experience and knowledge.

Participants included usability professionals, information designers, plain language experts, graphics artists, people with expereince as election officials, voting system designers, and social scientists

Workshop report

Defining a Summative Usability Test for Voting Systems
A report from the UPA 2004 Workshop on Ensuring the Usability of Voting Systems, September 2004

Ethics in voting design and usability
The following year, UPA and Design for Democracy worked together to create these ethical principles for professionals working in elections

Participants and position papers

A summary of the issues raised in the position papers

(Links lead to position papers submitted for the workshop)