As a practice, UX is confused about what is a short cut, what is a convention, and what is a best practice. Fortunately, the process on this project revealed where all of those were broken for the target users: people with low literacy.

1. Fooled by best practice
!
!
!
Dana Chisnell
UsabilityWorks and Center for Civic Design
dana@centerforcivicdesign.org
@danachis

3. The eureka moment

4. “Choice” was the wrong choice.

5. The project of a lifetime

8. $7,000,000

9. What if anyone could vote
on any device?

11. Designing for the invisible

12. Low literacy
48% of US adults
linear reading
literal meaning

13. Best practices
Embed assistance
Include illustrations
Add supplemental content
Prevent unintentional voting or skipping

14. 2007
2008
Started with
best practice

15. Rapid Estimate of Adult
Literacy in Medicine
REALM

16. Participants of the REALM

17. Process
related research
competitors
design principles
sketching
paper prototypes
digital prototypes

18. Process
33 sessions
at least 3 iterations
up to 20

19. The promise of “best practices”

20. Best practice:
Someone else has made the mistakes already.

21. Conventions are
enforced learned
behavior
The way things are usually done

22. Best practices v.
conventions
ALT text
captions on videos
good contrast
obviously clickable
relevant illustrations

23. Best practices v.
conventions
scroll bar behavior
save as v. duplicate
mega menus
pull to refresh
hamburger menus

25. Shortcuts
(that we confuse with conventions)

26. Avoiding reinvention

27. Why “choice” was bad

28. Voting Summary
deciding decided

29. Before After

30. Lessons learned

31. Before After

32. Before After

33. Before After

34. Trust the process

35. The process proved
the conventions
were broken

36. Plain interaction

37. Plain interaction
The fewest, simplest steps with maximal focus on
the user’s immediate next interaction.

38. “Best practice” is not enough.

39. Thank you.

40. Dana Chisnell
Center for
Civic Design
and
dana@centerforcivicdesign.org
centerforcivicdesign.org
@danachis
@ChadButterfly

41. P.S.
Try out a prototype of the ballot for yourself at
anywhereballot.com