Style Guide for Voting System Documentation at NIST

We've talked here about how important is that instructions for voters be easy to understand. The other key person on Election Day is the poll worker. Poll workers are also users of ballots and voting systems and are often the front line in troubleshooting problems. A new report from NIST provides guidelines for writing voting system documentation. One value of good system manuals is that election officials often use material from them to create poll worker training and voter education -- so usability flows down stream.

Call to action: Volunteer to test or be a poll worker

Much of the content on this blog comes from people on the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) Usability and Voting Project. We're gearing up now to help local elections officials test their ballots and other election materials for usability for the November election.

Ballots are being defined and designed now. Most have to be completed within a few weeks.

Want to help test ballots for usability? Step up! We'd love to have you. Questions? Write to us at voting@usabilityprofessionals.org.


In the meantime, a few pointers about working on elections.

1. Usability and Voting is non-partisan
First, and most importantly, this is a non-partisan effort. Whatever our personal political beliefs, they stay separate from this work. You can read our ethics guidelines for usability and design professionals on http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/ethics.html

2. Sign up to be a poll worker
We know that it’s hard to find time to volunteer. But there is something that everyone in the US can do that takes just a day (or part of a day) of your time. Sign up to be a poll worker. With record turnout expected this November, new poll workers are needed more than ever to meet the target of 2 million poll workers set by the EAC. To find out how to be a poll worker, contact your local elections office or visit http://www.eac.gov/voter/poll%20workers

3. Volunteer to help your local election officials with usability testing
One way to help ensure that ballots get a good usability test is to volunteer to run the test yourself. If you do:

• Please use the LEO Usability Testing Kit. Every election official has received a printed copy of the report, and it would be useful – especially in this first wave -- if we all used the materials they have already been introduced to, and spoke with one voice. Plus, your feedback will help improve the Kit. http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/leo_testing.html
  
  
• Remember that election officials are in the middle of their busiest, highest pressure work period – final preparations for a highly volatile presidential election. This is a time to offer to help, not offer blame.
  
  
• Don't be discouraged if they say "not this time" – offer to contact them again in the spring for the off-season elections.
  
  
• Before you make any recommendations, take a look at the EAC's Best Practices Guidelines for ballot designs as well as the recommendations in the Brennan Center report, Better Ballots. But, don't be surprised if you are told that it "can't be done". Not only do many voting systems have limitations that can get in the way, but elections are governed by state laws and regulations, as well as expectations from current practice. See http://www.eac.gov/election/effective-polling-place-designs and http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/better_ballots/
  

4. Keep in touch
Let us know if you have any contacts with elections folks. We're trying to keep track of any usability work, so we can get a full picture of the impact of our efforts.


We'll be happy to talk to anyone who is interested, and support them in any way we can. Our goal is to make better design and usability part of every aspect of elections, integrated into the normal processes.


Links:
LEO Usability Testing Kit
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/leo_testing.html

Ethics guidelines for usability and design professionals working in elections
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/ethics.html

Information about being a poll worker
http://www.eac.gov/voter/poll%20workers

EAC Effective Polling Place Designs
http://www.eac.gov/election/effective-polling-place-designs

EAC Election Management Guidelines
http://www.eac.gov/election/quick-start-management-guides

Brennan Center for Justice report Better Ballots
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/better_ballots/

UPA’s Voting and Usability Project
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/
voting@usabilityprofessionals.org.

UPA member Josie Scott trains Ohio elections officials to usability test ballots

Ohio has experienced dozens of major issues in elections over the last 10 years. Now as part of her efforts at improving elections, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's staff invited UPA's Usability and Voting Project to instruct local elections officials from throughout Ohio on how to use the Project's LEO Usability Test Kit to test their ballot designs before Election Day.

Usability and Voting Project member Josie Scott conducted training in Columbus with about 50 county election officials on July 22 and 23. Josie noted that many local election officials "will be motivated by their situations -- all of them are determined to conduct a much better election than the past few."

Developing the LEO (local elections officials) usability testing kit

A little more than year ago, Whitney Quesenbery had a crazy idea: What if someone taught local elections officials to do their own usability testing of ballots?

The MSU-UPA working group

Whitney called together a few people who thought it was an interesting idea. In April 2006, the “LEO kit” was born. LEO stands for Local Elections Official.

We worked together over a couple of days at Michigan State University’s Usability and Accessibility Center to scope out a usability testing “kit” to be used by people who have no specific training on usability or human factors engineering.

Then we went off to work on things separately and remotely, trading drafts and review comments through a wiki.

Designing a test protocol for people who aren’t usability professionals

We had a lot of questions:

• What do LEOs need to know to be able to conduct an effective usability test?
• How can we help LEOs understand the immediate and rippling benefits of usability testing their ballots?
• How can we give LEOs a great tool without adding significantly to their workloads?
• When in the elections cycle should ballots be tested?
• How many participants should LEOs include in each test?
• What constraints do LEOs have?

The pieces of the kit

We eventually agreed on three pieces for the kit:

• generic test plan that acts like a “how to” for planning usability tests of ballots
• template session script, which provides direction for moderating individual usability testing sessions, complete with what to say, when
• final report template to use to report results internally to elections departments or to the public.

We hope you’ll try them and send us feedback on how they worked for you. We will incorporate comments and post revisions regularly. If you want to be notified about updates to the LEO kit, let us know.