Workshops

This workshop will look at the social, civic and methodology issues in ensuring the usability of voting systems and new voting concepts currently being trialed. The goal of this workshop is to bring together practitioners, officials and researchers from around the world to look at the issue of e-voting/e-participation through the lens of usability and user-centered design.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

It is easy to push usability out of the picture in discussions of voting technologies. It is done all the time.

• One way is by focusing on the isolated act of marking the ballot. “After all, how hard is it to pick a candidate from a list? Most people manage it just fine.” is a typical comment. In this context, the large problems of designing the voting system and technology overwhelm the details of the core interaction.
• Another is to suggest that computer or political systems issues are more important, saying things like “If we can't trust the machines, there is no point in discussing any other aspect of the problem.”

We take a different view. It is only by considering usability (in the “big U” sense of looking at the entire context and user experience), and by following a user-centered design process that we will successfully make the transition to electronic voting technologies. Because those technologies are coming, we can either stand like Luddites against the “machines” or we can be part of the process of integrating those new technologies into voting systems.

The question we ask is a broad one:

What does it take to design a voting system that is not only usable, but might help meet larger goals of encouraging greater participation in the democratic process.?

Technology is neither inherently good nor bad, but if the human process is not considered in designing the use of that technology, the results will be flawed, unusable, and possibly untrustworthy. Our goal in this workshop is to explore what it takes to change this scenario into one with a successful outcome, though the use of our usability and user-centered design skills.

ISO13407 suggests that the first step in a human-centered design process is to identify the need for such a process. This workshop (and the other activities of the Voting and Usability Project) are part of this step.

Voting Context

The second step in a human-centered design process is to understand the context of use. In an election, this context is large, even for a single voter, but the system also includes elections officials, party representatives, maintenance and operations staff, politicians and the poll workers.

Voters: For voters, the context includes the entire process, from voter registration, to learning about the election and the candidates, to deciding how and where (or whether) to cast their vote, to any travel to the polling place (or receipt of remote material), to the actual casting of the ballot. It also includes how they learn about election results. Even if we simply focus on the materials created for the election, this is not a single problem. These materials include all printed (or electronic) material distributed to inform them of the election, notification of their polling methods or locations, signage at a central polling place, instructional materials, dissemination of results

The Design for Democracy project in Chicago included a wide range of materials in their work and were able to propose some significantly improved designs. Our questions about voters include:

• Can we create a model to describe the complete voting experience?
• What research has already been done (in any field) that informs this model?
• What are the primary usability needs within this model?

Usability Methods

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.

• What are the best practices in selecting methods at various points in the design process, and for different aspects of the voting experience?
• What is the best approach to creating system performance measures for electronic or innovative voting methods? (If NIST has published standards for measurement, we will use them as the basis for discussion)
• How do we create guidelines for usability exploration or evaluation that will help us not only test existing voting technologies, but create a framework for future innovations?

Ethics and Process

This is a focused area of interest. 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. In fact, one the researchers at Johns Hopkins who participated in a negative report on one vendor's solution was attacked for his connections to the industry.

• What are appropriate ethical guidelines for people working in this field?
• Are they higher than in any other usability work, specific to the industry, or will general ethical guidelines be enough to provide guidance.
• Are there special guidelines needed for working with participants in usability evaluations? Is it possible to conduct usability research during a “live” election?

PARTICIPANT SELECTION CRITERIA

Our goal is to gather together practitioners, officials and researchers working on issues surrounding the usability or context of use of voting systems. We will ask for position papers describing their current work, background in the field or interest in participating.

In the event that more than 20 people express an interest in participation, we will make our selection based on the following criteria:

• The uniqueness of their contribution to the workshop, or whether they represent a point of view not found in other participants
• Their ability to provide breadth or depth of experience
• The likelihood that they will be able to make use of the results of this workshop in their own work

Applying to Participate in This Workshop

A workshop is a closed session. Admission to a workshop requires an approved position paper from you addressing the issues suggested by the coordinator(s).

Click here for a template for your position paper

Please send your position paper (which should be roughly 1 to 3 pages) to Whitney Quesenbery, whitneyq@wqusability.com.

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• Position papers received by March 24 will be accepted or rejected by March 31, in time for you to register before the early registration deadline on April 2.
• Position papers received by May 5 will be accepted or rejected by May 12, in time for the May 14 registration discount.
• Papers received after May 12 will be evaluated at the facilitator's discretion.
• If you want to register early for UPA and have not completed your position paper by these deadlines, you may register for the rest of the conference and add the workshop fee later.

Position Papers should include:

• A brief description of your background in the design and usability of voting systems
• A description of your current work or interest in the field
• A list and comments on any issues you think are particularly important for this workshop, especially on our understanding of the entire context of voting, usability methods for researching or testing voting systems and ethical considerations.

Position papers and background materials will be posted on the workshop web site at:

http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_projects/voting_and_usability/voting_workshop2004.html

PRE-WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT ACTIVITIES

Before the workshop, participants will be able to join in an online discussion group (already active), read reports, standards and other resources on the web site and read each other's position papers.

PRE-WORKSHOP FACILITATION ACTIVITIES

Before the workshop, the facilitators will gather background material on existing projects, including as many pictures of actual system interfaces as possible, and make them available for review.

Who should participate

We encourage participation by people with a broad range of interests and professional or academic backgrounds. These might include:

• Usability professionals with experience in testing similar products, including difficult populations such as the elderly, computer novices, low-literacy populations and those with disabilities
• Voting advocates for people with disabilities
• People who have worked as election monitors or in other related positions
• Voting system designers or those currently working on systems
• Social scientists with an interest in e-government and e-participation issues
• Information designers with experience in public information and wayfinding
• And anyone with experience in other fields that can help inform work on the usability of voting systems.
  

POST-CONFERENCE DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS

Our goal in organizing this workshop is to provide participants with an opportunity to meet others in this small and scattered field. We plan three means of disseminating results:

• An article in the UPA Voice to report, at an overview level, to the general UPA membership
• A substantive posting on the Voting and Usability section of the UPA web site, to make this material available to the rest of the voting/e-participation/e-government community. This will include not only the output of the workshop, but also position papers from the participants (they will have an opportunity to edit them after the workshop if desired).
• A white paper offering guidance to usability professionals on testing methods, ethical standards and special issues in understanding the context of voting systems and elections, if they choose to work this field

POST-CONFERENCE ACTIVITIES

We see this event as part of an ongoing, world-wide conversation about the design of voting systems, the conduct of elections and the role of new technologies in elections. We expect to see this discussion continue in the egroup that we have already set up, and that the work we have done will be presented at other forums.

We also hope for two other post-workshop goals:

• That this workshop will provide people working in the field with the opportunity to meet. We started the e-group to meet a need that we heard from almost everyone – to find ways to connect with others.
• That we will be able to broaden the discussion of innovations in voting to include a consideration of both the usability of the voting system and the entire context of use from a human perspective.

FACILITATORS

Whitney Quesenbery

Whitney Quesenbery is the director of the UPA Voting and Usability Project, a role she took on when she was elected just days after the 2000 US Presidential election. Since then, she has presented many times on the topic at Georgia Tech Research Institute, SOLUTIONS Conference, and several local UPA and STC Chapters. She is on the Advisory Board for a Federal Elections Commission project to create usability guidelines, and was a speaker at the NIST symposium on Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems in 2003.

In her ‘civilian' life, Whitney Quesenbery is a user interface designer, design process consultant, and highly regarded speaker. She is an expert in developing new concepts that achieve the goal of meeting business, user, and technology needs. She has extensive user interface design experience and has produced award winning multimedia products, user interfaces, web sites, and software applications.

She is the owner and principal consultant for Whitney Interactive Design, LLC ( www.WQusability.com ) where she continues the work begun during her dozen years at Cognetics Corporation. Whitney's projects ranged from online financial news retrieval to hospital management software, web applications, and corporate information tools for companies such as the TriZetto Group, Open University, Armstrong, Novartis, Deloitte Consulting, Dow Jones, McGraw-Hill, Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, and Eli Lilly.

Whitney has worked with many companies to implement a user-centered design process. She was one of the key developers of LUCID, the Logical User-Centered Interaction Design framework, which provides a basis for developing specific methodologies for usability.

Josephine Scott

Before she advocated for users, Josephine Scott advocated for voters. She spent nearly 15 years with the Michigan Department of State's Bureau of Elections administering elections. In addition to understanding and administering state and federal election law, she advised local election officials on election conduct, training, and ballot design. She helped to test new systems (to be certain they met legal requirements) and wrote ballot instructions. The highlight of her election career was administering the 1996 Electoral College.

Josephine Scott is a Usability Specialist with Compuware Corporation. She applies user-centered design principles for Vantage (tm), a suite of systems performance monitoring tools, making the most complex domain more intuitive for even the most technical users (as well as those who are not!) She has also made contributions to Ford Motor Company's Web sites and software through the Ford IT Usability Services lab. Before that, she worked to make purchasing books, music and DVD/videos online more intuitive and accessible at the number three online bookstore, Borders.com.

Louise Ferguson

Louise Ferguson has recently joined the UPA Voting and Usability Project. She has been studying and writing about electronic democracy in Europe since 1999, becoming interested in voting usability at the time of the 2000 US Presidential election. She recently launched an international discussion list on behalf of UPA, dedicated to the usability, accessibility and security of voting systems, has spoken about the topic at the UK Oxford Internet Institute and is currently driving efforts to encourage exchange of expertise on this topic internationally.

Louise is the owner and principal consultant of Digital Habitats, where she pursues user research projects with a range of public sector authorities. In addition to conducting postgraduate ethnographic research into technology use in clinical practice in the UK public healthcare system, she has carried out ethnographic fieldwork studying technology use in both central and local government, and formative usability research for BP, Sapient and the UK Department of Work and Pensions, among others. Louise is a Research Associatewith UK workplace think tank The Work Foundation and a co-author of its 2003 research report, ‘Getting By, Not Getting On: Technology in UK Workplaces'.

She has spoken about technology on BBC radio, and about usability at the University of Glasgow, AIGA Experience Design London and UPA's UK chapter. She writes about usability and technology for publications including eGov Monitor and Usability News, whilst also informally advising civic society organizations on user-related issues. In a voluntary capacity, Louise is working with bodies such as the

UK Electoral Commission and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on E-Democracy to promote an informed approach to e-democracy. Louise recently joined the Council of the UK chapter of UPA, and has launched a chapter electronic newsletter.

Bill Killam

Mr. Killam is the President and Principle Human Factors Engineer at User-Centered Design, Inc. He is board certified in Human Factors Engineering by the Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics and has been providing Human Factors Engineering, user-centered design, and usability services for over 23 years. He has degrees in both engineering and psychology and has provided design and testing service to multiple Government and commercial clients including the US Army, the FBI, CDC, NCI, IBM, TRW, GTE, Lockheed Martin,. GEICO, and The MITRE Corporation. He is an active member of the human factors engineering and usability testing community at both the national and local level and has been the on the executive council of the Potomac Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the DC Chapter of the Usability Professionals Association, and the DC Chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery s Special Interest Group on Human Computer Interaction (ACM SIGCHI). He was a member of the Special Editorial Board for Human Sciences for the British publication Interacting with Computers and has had his design work highlighted as a case study in Interaction Design: Beyond Human Computer Interaction, a recently published textbook from Wiley Press. In addition to his consulting practice, he teaches Human Factors Engineering at both the University of Maryland and George Mason University.