Reading the interactive design news I discovered W3C research, released for public view and feedback on October 29th, 2009. W3C created the first draft of the Emotion Markup Language 1.0, conceived as a “plug-in” language for use in three different areas: manual annotation of visual and audio material involving emotionality; automatic recognition of user behavior from sensors; and generation of emotion-related system responses. According to this document, EmotionML can be applied to numerous aspects of modern technology including sentiment analysis, monitoring, control for virtual worlds, social robots, expressive speech synthesis, emotion recognition, and support for people with disabilities. For example, in ambient assisted living systems, this language would measure simple satisfaction levels at mealtime for people with autism, as well as proactive response when things go wrong with elderly individuals, allowing for a more patient-centered rather than institutionally-centered system. Under normal circumstances - and prior to critical conditions - there is a sensation in the human body that, if recognized in time, allows the prevention of a fatal situation. Multimodal Interaction Working Group proposes a general emotional language for various applications, as well as providing default options.
Here is an example of a how simple emotion annotation might look like:
<emotion>
<dimensions set=”myFriendlinessDimension”>
<friendliness value=”-0.7”/><! — a pretty unfriendly person — >
</dimensions> </emotion>
New language provides new ways to describe emotional dimensions by valence, potency, arousal, intensity and unpredictability. Most language specifics require a deeper understanding of the scale values, but by just examining the code, I found it amusing, and bewildering, to see numbers assigned to something that consists of more than just physical aspects. Is it then possible to capture the subtlety of human emotion? There are primary emotions that are undoubtedly recognized during typical interactions, such as fear, joy, and happiness, but there are also a wide range of complex experiences that consist of moods, feelings, stances towards objects and people, etc., that are so multilayered, momentary, and fleeting, that it seems virtually impossible to recognize them - let alone put numbers on them.
We possess a well-developed sense of emotional encounters and we experience emotions consistently. Our emotions become an inseparable part of our communication, and of our relationship to the environment. So it only makes sense for current technology to create an environment where interactions are emotionally rewarding. The recent Milo demo from the Natal project demonstrates amazing character development; making it clear that the modeling of emotion is the next step in the advancement of human-machine communication.
I find it exciting imagining an emotion markup language 10 years from now. How much of what we experience as humans could be translated into a digital language? How would our emotions be affected when they are encountered with a virtual replica? Will we experience positive emotions with digital characters more so than with real people? And what would we prefer? I asked my friends about the meaning and expression of emotion in their daily lives. The passion I heard could only come from another human and I hope this language will never be forgotten: “Emotion is a flood of feelings - taken outside of a person’s body or heart; expressed from hands and breath as music, in words as poetry, in paintings as color, and in dance as movement. Emotions are like colors of blood in your veins that carry memories, both happy and sad, and when they flow past your heart, feelings are triggered. Emotions make us feel sick, happy, full of life, or longing for life. Without emotions the earth is colorless, and there is no one to see its variance and beauty.”
The gaming industry is missing the boat. Kids are super engaged with video games, but their excitement and expertise hasn’t been leveraged to help acquire new audiences or influence parents to buy more games.
Let’s consider these data from a recent survey we fielded with about 50 kids ages 7-13:
Kids learn technology faster than anyone in their house. Both parents and kids agree: 64% of kids said they learn faster while 59% of parents said kids do too.
Although both kids and parents admit that parents know more about technology overall, they also agree that parents and kids know unique things about technology. Kids know more about entertainment type technology like playing games, working game consoles (Wii, Xbox 360), using iTunes, iPods, and iPhones, and social networking using Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and cell phone texting. Parents know more about things for work like email and word processing, financial things like buying stuff online and banking, and how to fix the computer when it is broken.
Observing kids teach their parents new technologies also shows that kids can be good teachers too. This video shows Ronan, a 7 year old, employing known educational psychology teaching methods to teach his mom how to play the Wii.
So, given all this, why hasn’t the gaming industry leveraged kids’ knowledge about gaming, ability to learn fast, and teach gaming to capture new audiences or influence parents to buy new games? To capture parent audiences, game makers could:
Create teaching modes within games that would help kids teach their parents how to play in a fun environment
To influence new games purchases game makers could:
Allow kids to get trial versions of games so they can learn them quickly and then use what they’ve learned to ‘demo’ the benefits to friends and family.
Kids could review games online, make recommendations to friends and even recommend ones their parents would enjoy.
Think: “Most Valued Player” programs for kid gamers. Think: converting users into spokespeople and trainers. Think: ka-ching.
10 inch today, 17 inch tomorrow. The enthusiasm around the size of multi-function, multi-touch screen displays in an automobile is comparable to the hype around horsepower during the glory days of American muscle cars. The manufacturer with most horsepower won bragging rights for best car on the market. Similarly, screen sizes in automobiles keep getting larger and larger. As the screen grows in size, so does the opportunity to communicate more information on that screen. Marketed as a ‘new’ innovation in automotive, these screens are doing more to interact and respond to the wants and demands of a driver.
Is Bigger Better?
The bigger-is-better approach may indeed improve the driving experience. These screens can display more information in larger formats that are easier to interact with. Large screens also offer a more flexible platform compared to conventional dials and hard buttons. Soft buttons in these multi-touch displays can change on demand. For example, the volume control for the media player can easily transform itself to temperature control. But there are drawbacks to adopting this new trend in automotive technology. First, the physical muscle memory associated with hard buttons help drivers to map locations of each button/control used while driving. In essence, the driver’s muscle memory of hard buttons enables quicker and safer access to controls. Soft buttons on a digital display do not provide the tactile feel necessary to develop the muscle memory. More buttons displayed on screen means a driver needs to spend more time staring at it to find information, otherwise it is like trying to find a moving object in dark. In a driving situation, any additional moment you spend gazing at the screen and not at the road could tremendously increase the chance of accident.
In my last post, I described what mobility means today and offered a glimpse into the automotive industry’s focus on mobility related challenges. With the intent of proposing a new experience of ‘mobility’ of the future, here are technologies that could help improve the mobile experience in cars.
HUD (Head Up Display)
A head-up display, or HUD, is any transparent display that presents data without requiring the user to look away from his or her usual viewpoint. The origin of the name stems from the user being able to view information with his head “up” and looking forward, instead of angled down looking at lower instruments. The first HUDs were essentially advancements of static gun sight technology for military fighter aircraft aimed to offer advantages in in-air dogfights. And the core merit from this technology in automotive applications is that it offers a more ergonomic solution and keeps the drivers’ eyes focused on the road. Key information required in most common driving situations like speed and navigational direction is displayed on the windshield as a clear and easy-to-read image. BMW claims that
Head-Up Display halves the time it takes for eyes to shift focus from road to the instruments and back, dramatically reducing the risk of not seeing the sudden illumination of brake lights of the car ahead, or an unexpected obstacle
But today the display size of HUD units in automobiles is limited a portion of the windshield that measures 18 x 10 cm. The driver may also experience issues switching between the focal distance of a HUD and objects outside the automobile. (Automotive HDs: the overlooked safety issues by Daniel R. Tufano).
User interface toward natural UI
The increasing amount of information from sensors in cars and those carried onboard by the driver has led the automotive industry to offer solutions that make them more accessible and manageable. From the BMW’s original idrive to the latest “remote touch” solution from Lexus, the basic approach seems to be the same. These solutions may seem accessible and familiar to the driver because they resembles the mechanism we are used to from using a computer mouse and remote controls. But the core issue remains: it requires drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel.
Innovating with Behavioral Data
With advances in natural user interfaces, heads-up displays, and head and eye tracking, the interface can be made safer and ergonomically sound. For example, the combination of headtracking with a HUD can improve the display of information while keeping the drivers hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road. The onboard computer system can also track behavioral patterns that can help “tune” the user interface of the display. In case, information displayed via HUD can stay at a minimized state (creating less distraction) until driver’s focus is engaged with the display when it expands reveal more information. When the driver’s focus looks away, the displayed information would disappear. The driver’s natural movement dictates the interaction.
continues to part 3: augmented reality and its possibilities…
Gizmodo recently posted news about an android application that enables drivers to augment what they see from the car with turn-by-turn directions. Cool application, but in an era where we may already have too many driving distractions, it got me thinking about the relationship of information and technologies to automotive experiences.
PART 1: Defining Auto-Mobile
Mobility
As far as we can remember, the notion of ‘mobility’ has meant transportation from A to B. Transportation via foot, train, car, and airplane fulfilled a desire to connect the world of people and information. And the desire for better and faster mobility has led to the invention of the internet, mobile phone, and social networking services. Today, ‘mobility’ no longer solely represents the idea of transportation. It is now about the freedom of accessing information and an ability to communicate to whomever,whenever. Information in this mobile form has enabled a complex network of geographical and social communication channels that distribute an overwhelming amount of information, data and interactions between people. For example, powered by mobile devices like the iPhone, Twitter has been used to spread breaking news and receive updates from field reporters and public observers. This living stream of information and how we are connected to it is something that we can no longer avoid or ignore. Today we live mobile lives, always connected to information.
Automobile
Now, let’s talk about cars and mobility. What does the automobile mean to people today? The word automobile comes from combining Greek word “auto” meaning self and Latin word “mobils” meaning moving. Literally translated, it means to move itself. Within the context of the modern definition of ‘mobility’, an automobile should not only move itself physically, but offer a way of moving our ‘connected’ life style and information. Automobiles are often a catalyst for bringing new technologies into the mass market. In its effort to offer the best at-wheel experience, a modern automobile is equipped with numerous sensors and gadgets. At its best, a modern automobile offers a level of connection and integration by supporting portable and wireless devices. Moreover, the connection to external data via GPS/satellite assists the driver to stay on route with updated information such as traffic condition. But these technologies don’t quench the driver’s thirst for seamless integration like they’ve learned to expect from a mobile phone or the internet. Safety concerns limit the access to various types of information at the wheel. But it is still tempting to send text message, talk on the phone, or watch a favorite movie from the laptop mounted to the dashboard while driving. These behaviors demonstrate that consumers desire a connected lifestyle in an automobile, even though it means jeopardizing their safety. The automotive industry clearly has a challenge to meet these demands with the highest priority in safety.
A couple of months ago I bought a Flip Mino HD camcorder. While most camcorders are proud of their exhaustive feature list, the Flip takes the opposite approach. Here’s what David Pogue had to say about the original Flip in his review:
The screen is tiny (1.5 inches) and doesn’t swing out for self-portraits. You can’t snap still photos. There are no tapes or discs, so you must offload the videos to a computer when the memory is full (30 or 60 minutes of footage, depending on whether you buy the $150 or $180 model). There are no menus, no settings, no video light, no optical viewfinder, no special effects, no headphone jack, no high definition, no lens cap, no memory card. And there’s no optical zoom — only a 2X digital zoom that blows up and degrades the picture. Ouch.
At the time of writing, the Flip had captured 13 percent of the camcorder market.
Another quiet trend is the rise of the Netbook. As noted in the most recent issue of Wired:
Inspired (or perhaps a bit scared) by the OLPC project, Asustek…began crafting its own inexpensive, low-performance computer. It, too, would be built cheaply using Linux, flash memory, and a tiny 7-inch screen. It had no DVD drive and wasn’t potent enough to run programs like Photoshop. Indeed, Asustek intended it mainly just for checking email and surfing the Web. Their customers, they figured, would be children, seniors, and the emerging middle class in India or China who can’t afford a full $1,000 laptop.
Traditionally, development trickles down from the high end to the mass market. PC makers target early adopters with new, ultrapowerful features. Years later, those innovations spread to lower-end models. But Jepsen’s design trickled up. In the process of creating a laptop to satisfy the needs of poor people, she revealed something about traditional PC users. They didn’t want more out of a laptop—they wanted less. (Italics mine)
By the end of this year, the humble Netbook is expected to capture more than 12% of the laptop market. In a mature and saturated segment, that is quite remarkable.
What is going on here? How can devices that do a whole lot less be so successful? Isn’t it all about features and capabilities and the latest technology? It seems that the for the vast majority of customers, they really only need a very small set of features; record a video, play a video, surf the web, check email.
In his book “In Pursuit of Elegance”, Matthew E. May writes about the power of elegant design:
Elegance is an elusive target, which explains why it’s so rare, and in turn so desirable. Experiencing elegance is nearly always profound. The unusually simple yet surpisingly powerful nature of any elegant this or that gives us pause, and the impact changes our view of things, often forever. Elegance delivers the power to cut through the noise. It can shake markets. It can change minds, and mindsets.
May breaks elegance down to four elements: Symmetry, Seduction, Subtraction, Sustainability. To be truly elegant, the collective execution of all four elements is required. However, there is no denying the power of “subtraction” on its own, where it is the process of “taking away” that adds value. So a cheap Netbook may not qualify as “elegant” according to May, but is is certainly striking a chord inthe marketplace. My Flip Mino certainly feels closer to “elegant” than the latest HD camcorder from Sony.
The challenge for product strategists and marketers and designers is to develop the discipline to strive for less, not more. This doesn’t mean masking complexity with a simple facade, but striving to understand the essence of the design and then staying true to that vision. We can also take a lesson from the great Michelangelo; when asked about how he carved his statue of David, he replied:
“I saw David through the stone, and I simply chipped away everything that was not David.”
“In the year 2004, the next presidential campaign after this one, you will find, in my opinion, the vast majority of states will already have Internet voting.”
– John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, Inc. (January 20, 2000)
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
– Thomas Jefferson
I don’t mean to disparage Mr. Chambers. Though, in retrospect, it’s pretty funny to think that he may have actually believed we’d soon be voting online, less than 10 months before what happened in Florida in 2000. The point I want to make is that predicting the future is no simple task! Please note also that he made this prediction at a Brookings Institution symposium several weeks before the dot-com bubble burst.
Speaking of bygone eras, our recent November 4th election marked the end of another era. In Washington state, it signaled the end of polling places. All future elections, until further notice, will be mail by vote only, using paper ballots to be counted by optical scan machines. I talked to a number of voters outside the Madrona School in Seattle on Election Day, and many of them expressed profound sadness that the public experience of voting was coming to an end. They had taken their children with them to show them something they might never see again.
Farewell to Polls 2008: I voted!
It’s also soon to be the end of the Bush era and finally time, as many frustrated Americans have expressed, for the 21st century to begin. We’ve already seen President-elect Obama take an incredibly proactive approach in preparing his transition team to hit the ground running in January. We all know he’s got a whole lot on his plate, but after a decisive victory on Election Night, with no major systemic disasters occurring, few people are probably thinking much about the problems with our voting systems.
However, the system itself is still far from perfect and still susceptible to breakdowns and failures. Will voting machines and standards for approving and testing them be a top priority for government in the coming months? Will Election Day administration improve so voters don’t stand in line for hours? What other parts of the larger voting experience will be addressed now that there is time and attention to devote to it? Is there even the political will to do so?
What can we expect to be different by the 2010 midterms? And what will the 21st century voting experience be like in 20 years?
We believe that in 2028, paper ballots will still be in use (in some places, for some voters, and for some situations). But, that doesn’t mean things won’t be a whole lot different too…
Why would we still be using paper you may be asking incredulously? For the time being, the vast majority of voting system, computer science, and security experts agree that paper ballots with precinct count optical scanning is the best option we have. Such a system balances the needs for security, speed, accuracy, cost, and voter confidence since the ballot becomes a verifiable paper trail, a physical “backup.”
Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University has said, “the ‘best’ voting system, whether it’s computerized or something else entirely, is the one that balances three key features: security, accountability, and public trust.”
The ideal voting system must balance these three features.
One of our big problems is that we Americans love speed and convenience so much. It’s practically a cultural obsession. Some experts — like Appel and cryptography and security expert Bruce Schneier, for example — would argue that our rush to increase the speed of elections (in order to scale to 130 million voters or more) has come at the expense of security and accuracy, which of course ultimately undermines public trust.
Even our so-called “news” organizations (the most notable exception, perhaps, being The New York Times) appeared to be in a ratings race on Election Night to call the contest first (remember the news organizations calling the election prematurely multiple times in 2000?). Nobody actually wants to wait for the counting to finish… we must be the first to call it! And with a holographic anchorwoman!
Taking Professor Appel’s three system features and the system diagram from the last post, the key is to think of the voting experience as a large, complex process involving many entities interacting over a protracted period of time starting long before Election Day — not just a brief transaction between a voter, a ballot, and a machine.
In this larger process, the most serious problem is widely regarded to be voter registration, and we’ll see that it will be one of the first major areas to be reformed. So, on that note, let’s move on to our predictions for the future…
The next five years:
1. The private vendors producing voting systems will continue to focus on marketing their optical scanning machines to election officials. Don’t expect a lot of new DRE systems to be developed and sold by this current crop of vendors. They will not be investing heavily in R&D, and while standards remain voluntary it is doubtful they will be doing a whole lot of testing and improving of current DRE equipment lines. It just ain’t worth it to them. Like one analyst said when Diebold changed the name of its election systems subsidiary to Premier Election Solutions, it was responsible for “5 percent of revenue and 100 percent of bad public relations.” And from state and local election officials’ point of view, there’s a pretty strong cost argument against touch screen DRE machines, which require more machines per voter than paper ballot and optical scan systems, with the additionally “expensive” risk of looking bad if something goes wrong.
2. The voter registration system will be overhauled to fit the needs of a modern and mobile society, early voting will be expanded, and more states considering new equipment will move to optical scan systems. Some of these states will become mail-in only. In terms of the voter registration issue, it could be a challenging and lengthy ordeal in the Congress since there’s the thorny issue of stepping on states’ toes, but in the end universal voter registration will become law, and eligible voters will be automatically registered, even when they move. Lawsuits and frustrations in dealing with third-party organizations submitting voter registration applications will be greatly reduced. Early voting will become available in all 50 states, not only providing voters with more convenience, but also distributing the load on the system and providing more opportunities to test the system and iron out potential complications as they occur.
3. Starting with the Obama administration (hopefully), we will see the beginning of a shift in culture toward listening to all sides of an issue; greater openness to the public, academic, and private spheres participating in and being heard by government; more cooperation and collaboration between all of these parties; and increased transparency of this process and its inner workings. This will lead to a better, multidisciplinary approach to standards development. But, government is slow. “The problem is that the pace of innovation is outstripping the pace of regulation,” says Doug Chapin, director of the Web site set up by Pew Center on the States, electionline.org. Expect the seeds to be planted, but the plant to take more time to flourish and bloom.
4. Along with greater transparency in government, we will see continued grassroots and community-based “policing,” documenting, and reporting of the election process on blogs, wikis, video sites, and other Internet destinations. This form of public oversight of the process will complement and even become a resource for state and election officials, who will be held accountable for overseeing the process, adhering to standards, protecting voters’ rights, and administering elections efficiently.
5. Congress will eventually create better and mandatory standards and guidelines for the development, testing, certification, design, and usability of voting systems and ballots. There will be actual oversight, enforcement, and accountability. Public watchdog groups will also participate in making sure that local and state election officials, voting system manufacturers, and others involved in either implementing or undermining the system are monitored by the public. Whoever ends up design and developing software for voting systems will have to open up their code to public scrutiny. As Bruce Schneier writes, ”computerised systems with these characteristics won’t be perfect — no piece of software is — but they’ll be much better than what we have now. We need to treat voting software like we treat any other high-reliability system. The auditing that is conducted on slot machine software in the US is significantly more meticulous than that applied to voting software. The development process for mission-critical airplane software makes voting software look like a slapdash affair. If we care about the integrity of our elections, this has to change.”
6. Voters will organically build communities, social networks, and devise new forms of civic engagement in the election process, particularly as the voting system itself becomes more “offsite,” rather than in polling places. Voluntary public gatherings, celebrations, and public multimedia installations will document, capture, and visualize the democratic process unfolding in real time, from the moment the candidates declare their candidacies through to the moment the votes are counted.
Within a decade:
7. Over the next decade, expect there to be major efforts to improve and expand eGovernment, including better integration of the hundreds of services provided by government. Databases and voter rolls will be cleaner, more accurate, and better synchronized. With a national chief technology officer, active citizen involvement, and the philosophies of openness and transparency, government websites and services will improve. Government will be more connected and integrated, and as a result will be more responsive and more effective. Tim O’Reilly believes that “there will be significant investment in applying the lessons learned from internet campaigning into the tools of internet governance. There are efforts already underway to build better tools for two-way communication, for government transparency, and for harnessing innovations from outside the public sector to improve the work of the public sector.”
8. Government will harness the collective intelligence of citizens in other ways as well. Crowdsourcing and open innovation methods, like government-sponsored contests (think the Ansari X Prize for voting machines), will lead to healthy competition among private companies, individuals, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits. This will help lead the way to Internet-based voting systems that are cryptographically secure, visually-intuitive, beautifully and effectively designed, and adaptive to different voter needs. Natural user interfaces will allow individuals to vote through a combination of physical gestures with their hands, eye-tracking, or voice commands. For the physically challenged, other input methods will also be supported. Don’t be surprised either if innovations in voting systems come from the outside, possibly even from unexpected sources or places (like India, which is the largest democracy in the world and already uses more than 1 million electronic voting machines in its elections). The advances in security, technology, and design made by these diverse sources will result in some initial large scale deployments of Internet voting. At first, Internet voting will be administered only at specific, smaller locations where it can be carefully monitored. With time, improvements will be made and problems will be addressed. Authentication of voters and determining their eligibility will have challenges that will have to be ironed out. Biometrics may be used for “signing in,” but the public will need time to grow comfortable with the idea. Voting from mobile or remote Internet devices will not happen in this timeframe, but with enough success could become available within twenty years. Be assured, however, that along with expanded early voting, more options will be available to voters on how they vote in order to meet the diverse needs of a populace in an increasingly complex world.
9. Real standards which stand up to the demands of our most knowledgeable security, technology, and design experts will finally become mandatory, enforceable, and applied in all of the republic. Developers of voting technologies and designers of complex election administration processes and procedures will be under the watchful eyes of government overseers, independent third parties, and the public. Better election administration will become another focus of innovation. As designers are brought to participate in the design of these services, processes, and systems as well, expect the voting experience to become more pleasant and reassuring. Gone will be the “time tax” that essentially is levied on voters forced to wait in long lines on Election Day. Nobody will have to wait for hours to vote. Improved administration will also mean more equitable distribution of equipment and resources, better training for poll workers, and improved preparation and procedures for emergencies or other Election Day breakdowns. According to Doug Lewis, head of the nonprofit Election Center, in the 2008 election, “everyone involved in conducting elections was just on pins and needles the entire year. Over-planning really helped… Election officials went to extraordinary lengths to have not only a Plan A, but a Plan B and a Plan C.” Through better communications and online sharing tools like wikis and social networking sites, expect the best practices of election administration, troubleshooting, and poll worker resources to be widely rated and made available.
In twenty years:
10. In the year 2028, voters will still have paper ballots as an option because: a) some states decide that paper works pretty well and gives the best bang for buck, b) some voters, especially older, less tech-savvy people, will be uncomfortable with electronic or other means of voting, or c) paper ballots will always be available in any election as part of good contingency planning. Nonetheless, as mentioned above, they will also have many other options available to them to make voting as easy as possible. Online voting will be available in some states, but not all. Some states will have expanded availability to any location, thus some voters will vote from home or remotely on mobile Internet devices. People will identify themselves and authenticate their eligibility to vote with a unique, randomly generated token which will be provided to them by the state. This token will not be linked in any way to other identifiers like name, address, or social security number. A voter will know immediately if his or her identity has been used already to vote. If it has been, a report can be filed instantly and directly to the government and other authorities. In addition, the voter would receive a new provisional token and be able to vote while the case is being resolved, which will have to occur rapidly. After submitting a ballot, whether online, on a DRE machine, or a paper ballot, not only will the election authorities have a paper ballot generated for audit purposes, but the voter will also have a unique, randomly generated tracking code provided which will be recorded with his/her vote and known only to that voter. It will not be retrievable if lost, but the voter will be able to use the code to later track his/her vote in the publicly available, online database which contains all precinct results being reported in real-time and transmitted up to the state level. Voters will finally be given the feedback they want and need: a way to actually track their votes, much like they can easily track a package moving through the FedEx or other delivery system. The system will be designed to protect the privacy and anonymity of the voter, since not other voter information will be attached to that record. This will provide voters confidence that their votes really did get counted and did not simply disappear into a dark, mysterious void.
Conclusion
So, that’s it. Though the future “voting booth” may not be that unrecognizable to a person from today, you can be sure that the truly cutting edge technologies will find their way into other aspects of the larger voter experience. At home, voters will have large walls or displays capable of displaying and visualizing large amounts of information about candidates and issues. They will interact with natural user interfaces to navigate through the complexity and enormity of the data in ways that will improve education and decision-making. There will be digital tools that will help guide them and prepare them for filling out ballots, by whichever method they choose to vote. And because government will be online, secure, and open, voters will also be able to mine the tabulated data in real-time, using visualization tools, so everyone can be their own John King. Of course, by then John King will have much cooler toys as well.
Outside of the home, augmented reality and powerful mobile Internet handhelds will also inform and enable voters with many of the same capabilities and resources, overlaying meaningful data, media, and realistic 3D models of people and other physical objects into voters’ field of vision. Public installations with interactive screens and surfaces, projected 3D holograms, and physical objects will also draw voters into the experience and educate, inform, and engage the populace in a dynamic, civic experience. Voters overall will be more active in the political process, leveraging the power of the Internet and social technologies to create communities and build intimate relationships between themselves and the candidates. These changes, in addition to the improvements in the registration system, expanded voting periods, and a diverse set of ballot-casting options, will also help to reduce voter apathy. Though voting from the privacy of one’s home will be preferable for some, most people will still seek out these communal experiences instead or in addition, particularly in states that no longer have physical polling places. They will choose to celebrate the democratic process and will find ways to connect with their close neighbors as well as distant communities through live, online feeds connecting small towns and urban centers across the country. Voter turnout will rise to above 70% in presidential elections because all of these changes will truly empower people and make them feel like they matter.
The media and news providers will still be trying to outdo one another with the latest applications of emergent technologies and digital tools. This will continue to provide amusing entertainment for the public, but expect people to find themselves less reliant on these sources and more deeply engaged in their own created and shared experiences — physical and virtual — where they make meaning of the unfolding political process.
As experts at the Brennan Center for Justice have pointed out, the system we have today for managing our elections and voting process is overly complicated and too vulnerable to error and manipulation. The goal of future reforms should be to utilize technology, design, policy, and other expertise to simplify the process, reduce variables which can lead to numerous and unexpected problems in the days and months before an election, and balance the needs for security, accountability, and public confidence without costing the taxpayers extraordinary amounts of money, time, or confusion. In the end, all these considerations will be factored with the requirements for election results to be determined accurately and efficiently, making the “voting booth” of the future so simple, flexible, and intuitive that voters won’t ever have to wonder if their voices will be heard. And in the event that they aren’t, we’ll all be alerted to it an instant.
So, what do all of you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the future voting experience…
“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Voter Needs
So, what exactly are a voter’s needs today? We would contend that they are the following:
To be informed (about the issues, the candidates, the process, and the logistics)
Ease and clarity of registration
Convenient access to voting tools and polling places
Simplicity
Privacy and security
To feel confident that one’s vote matters, that it has been cast as intended, and has been counted
To feel a sense of participation and connectedness with one’s community
To have trust in the system and the outcome
All of these needs are critical, but we’ll keep most of the discussion that follows later in this post to the last three, which are key to motivating voters to participate. Confidence, trust, and connection ultimately result from a system that is open and transparent. If that system also follows principles of good, user-centered design and provides appropriate feedback, has built-in redundancy for vote tabulation, and includes real voters in the design and refinement of the processes and tools, then it should be a system that voters can trust, rather than one that produces the doubt and cynicism expressed by this Cincinnati woman in 2004.
(Mike Simons / Getty Images)
Being Informed: Voter Education
Let’s just make a couple quick points here about the need to “be informed” and the issue of convenience. Like President Roosevelt said, the real safeguard of our democracy is education. Today, as we face a rapidly changing world and increasing global competition, it will be critical that we focus on educating children for the jobs of the future and plan for re-training and continuing education for existing workers whose jobs may not remain for long. This is certainly one way in which education will represent a key to protecting our democracy.
But on the point of voter education, we also still have a long way to go. We personally know many well-educated, hard-working people who are excited about this presidential election, yet they admit ignorance about many of the local contests and initiatives/referenda on their ballots (they should check out Ballotpedia).
Nonetheless, the tools and access provided by the Internet are nothing short of astounding when it comes to addressing voter education. Wikis, social networking applications, Twitter reports, video sits, and user-generated content are complementing the vast resources available from government, the candidates’ campaigns, think tanks, and major media sources.
However, a plethora of tools and data alone doesn’t translate into actionable or useful information for voters. That is where information design and UX/UI design can play a more important role. In addition, not all Americans are exposed equally to the diversity of tools and information available (many probably stick to the more familiar sources) and there is a lot of misinformation available online as well. Despite these concerns, the explosion of interest and resources online is a positive trend that will only get better in the future.
Convenience
As to convenience, there is a powerful argument for making the process of registering and voting more convenient for and accessible to everyone. Despite moves to that effect, including early voting, “no excuse” absentee voting, and mail-in voting, we still hear stories today about people standing in line in Los Angeles, for instance, for 3-5 hours to vote early. And, contrary to what one might expect, mail-in voting has not necessarily increased voter turnout or participation. Furthermore, mail-in voting is susceptible to corruption and fraud in the form of coerced voting, vote buying, or forged signatures. However, voting from home also can protect individuals’ privacy, particularly those who might experience intimidation at polling places, and it makes it easier for the ill or physically-challenged to exercise their right to vote.
Some critics also argue that mail-in voting takes the social or civic engagement out of voting. This may be true in some cases, but we’ve also heard anecdotes here in Washington of voters filling out their mail-in ballots and dropping them off in person at City Hall in order to experience that sense of connection with the community.
Regardless of the critiques, these actions to increase convenience demonstrate a trend which will continue towards making the registration and voting process more convenient and sensitive to the needs of a diverse electorate. While there will always be a need to improve security to avoid electoral fraud, ultimately having these options will help prevent the disenfranchisement of voters by long lines or other inefficiencies and inconveniences that make the act of voting truly difficult for some people.
One additional need that we believe represents a great opportunity for future voting systems is providing a means for the individual voter to personally verify that his or her vote has been received and counted. The challenge there will be security and privacy, of course, but we can imagine a day when a ballot can be “tracked” like a package.
Obstacles and Inefficiencies
The current situation with the voter experience is rife with obstacles and inefficiencies which compromise voter needs and goals. These ongoing challenges for the future include, but are not limited to:
Voter suppression: a blanket term for the use of governmental power, political campaign strategy, and private resources aimed at reducing the total vote, sometimes involving intimidation, and ultimately leading to disenfranchisement
Disenfranchisement: explicitly through law, implicitly through intimidation, indirectly due to technical errors, or in a de facto way due to lack of training or misleading information
Voter purging: necessary in order to maintain dependable, up-to-date, and accurate voter registration lists (or “voter rolls”), but practiced without transparency and oversight, often in secrecy, relying on error-ridden lists, and without providing any sort of notice to those affected
Vulnerability to hacking: represents a serious concern to many voters and has been demonstrated repeatedly by computer science and security experts at Princeton, UCSB, and many other universities
Long lines: mentioned earlier, it may have many causes, including poor planning, machine failure, lack of resources, lack of training, and problems with voter rolls, which often results in voter disenfranchisement (or having only one location for early voting for all of Los Angeles!)
Electoral fraud: another blanket term which can describe any type of manipulation or interference with an election… nothing new, but an ongoing challenge, nonetheless
Misinformation and disinformation: the unintentional (former) and deliberate (latter) spreading of false information, which could be propaganda, mistakes that lead to voter confusion, or just election season dirty tricks attempting to suppress voter turnout during election period (like phony fliers)
Usability and design: given national attention by the problems voters had with the “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County, Florida, in 2000, this includes anything from information design to typography and alignment to wording and language to logic and feedback
Usability Issues
There has been a lot of attention in our community on usability issues related to paper and onscreen ballots. Several reputable organizations have taken it upon themselves to improve the process. After the 2000 election, AIGA Design for Democracy centered its focus on election design, beginning with solutions for election officials in Illinois and Oregon, and eventually developing design guidelines for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). These guidelines help improve ballot design, both on paper and on screen, through improved readability, typography, graphic design, information hierarchy, and the use of simple, easy to understand language. The result is a valuable set of guidelines for election officials to vastly improve the usability of ballots.
In 2007, Design for Democracy also succeeded in publishing research and best practice recommendations for the information design of ballots and polling places, which were accepted nationally by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The EAC is the independent agency of the U.S. government created by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to serve as a resource for election administrators and to establish standards for voting systems (which as yet remain voluntary, by the way, likely explaining their lack of broad adoption).
In addition, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU has produced a set of ballot design guidelines in collaboration with a number of the leading usability experts, designers, voting systems experts, political scientists, and election officials. They have identified 13 common design problems with ballots, as well as a number of state and local laws that actually interfere with good design and usability. For example, a recent editorial from The New York Times criticized a law that actually requires, albeit inadvertently, that ballots violate some obvious principles of good design: “New York has long had a misguided ‘full-face ballot’ law that requires every race to be listed on a single screen or piece of paper. Experts say that leads to information overload, voter confusion and errors.” The editorial staff goes a step further, adding that “there is also remarkably little usability testing before elections, which would allow officials to learn in advance when ballots have problems.”
While some local jurisdictions are probably applying the design principles successfully to their own ballots and polling places, due to the highly decentralized election system in this country, it is difficult to know exactly how pervasive the guidelines have become in one year.
Have qualified designers or consultants been brought in to create or review ballot designs, for example? Has this become a standard part of the process of local election officials?
We suspect that the answer is no, or perhaps not enough. In addition, we wonder to what extent real users, actual voters of different ages, origins, demographic, and psychographic makeup have been brought into the process. Have ballot designs, user interaction, polling place designs, and signage been tested with real users? An iterative approach involving rapid prototyping and testing could be very quick and effective without great expense, but we doubt that this has become engrained in the culture of election administrators on a large scale.
As a design consultancy, we would love to, for example, take the guidelines and standards developed for the EAC (as well as insights into voter needs and goals) and work with the software and hardware developers of DRE voting machines to create an improved user experience, vetted through concept and usability testing with actual voters. And, should every state choose to do things a little differently, we don’t imagine that state or local election officials would be wanting for help. Jon Pincus, the founder of the Voter Suppression Wiki, agrees: “there are more than 50 qualified design firms in the United States. So, that shouldn’t be a fundamental limitation.”
The Larger Voting Process
“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves — and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.”
– Tom Stoppard, British playwright
The Brennan Center estimates that tens to hundreds of thousands of votes are lost or miscast in every election due to bad ballot design, confusing instructions, and poor usability, resulting “in far more lost votes than software glitches, programming errors, or machine breakdowns.” In a close election, like several recent national and state contests, the disenfranchisement of this many voters can play a decisive role. As the Brennan Center argues, “candidates should win or lose elections based upon whether or not they are preferred by a majority of voters, not on whether they have the largest number of supporters who — as a result of education and experience — have greater facility navigating unnecessarily complicated interfaces or complex instructions, or because fewer of their supporters are elderly or have reading disabilities.”
We agree, but, it’s also important to put things in perspective.
One of the most lofty goals of a democracy should be the active participation of all of its citizens in the democratic process. As Thomas Paine wrote, “the right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.” Therefore, any discussion of elections and voting should remember to measure the relative gravity of a problem by the number of people it prevents from exercising their franchise as intended. So, by this measure, we could probably rank the problems we face as follows:
Apathy & laziness: several tens of millions of potential voters (source: Dr. Michael McDonald at GMU)
Voter suppression, purging, and disenfranchisement: hundreds of thousands to a few millions of voters (source: Brennan Center)
Bad ballot design and confusing instructions: tens to hundreds of thousands of lost or miscast votes in every election, which we assume includes electronic voting machines as well paper ballots (source: Brennan Center)
Long lines and other administrative inefficiencies leading to disenfranchisement: tens of thousands of voters? (our guess)
Hacking: none so far? (has anyone yet proven this to have happened?)
According to analysis from Dr. Michael McDonald at George Mason University, the voter eligible population in the 2004 general election was approximately 203 million, with about 60% turning out and voting for the highest office on the ballot. That means more than 81 million eligible voters did not vote.
Clearly, voter turnout is the most serious problem facing our voting system — a problem that will require a lot more than just better design and technology to improve.
To help illustrate the other issues, obstacles, and inefficiencies contributing to our many voting challenges, let’s consider this diagram of the larger voter process and ecosystem:
Larger Voting Process and Ecosystem
In the above sketch, the parts in red indicate areas that have aroused a lot of public concern due to the opacity of the process. Private companies are able to protect their intellectual property and don’t have to reveal how their machines work. In addition, despite the establishment of the EAC by the Help America Vote Act and the creation of standards and guidelines for voting systems and election administration, there are still concerns that the standards are voluntary and weak, and the process for vetting machines and software is fundamentally unsound.
Dr. Michael Shamos from Carnegie Mellon University minced no words in his testimony to the Environment, Technology, and Standards Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science on June 24, 2004: “I am here today to offer my opinion that the system we have for testing and certifying voting equipment in this country is not only broken, but is virtually nonexistent. It must be re-created from scratch or we will never restore public confidence in elections.”
We would also like to see the process for development of software, hardware, and other voting technology to be open, transparent, and peer-reviewed. More participation from the public, the general technology community, scholars, and experts would help ensure that the machinery of our elections isn’t controlled entirely by private, and possibly partisan, companies.
The Brennan Center also recommends that the federal government increase its role in the process of voting system and ballot design and testing, for every machine model, and by providing funding for usability testing. We would add that the EAC should make standards mandatory and enforceable, encourage cooperation between election officials and design and usability experts, and take a more proactive role in the dissemination of standards and guidelines to state and local authorities.
Registration list maintenance by state governments also remains a highly opaque process which has led to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters. Research has found that “over the past several years, every single purge list the Brennan Center has reviewed has been flawed” and that many of those identified on purge lists were in fact eligible to vote. The Brennan Center outlines a number of recommendations we agree with that might help bring more regularity and accountability to the practice of voter roll maintenance.
So, where do digital tools and technologies play a role on the ecosystem diagram above?
For voters, wikis like the Voter Suppression Wiki and the Election Protection Wiki are helping to inform people as they prepare to vote and to document activities that may interfere with their attempts to exercise that right. Over time, that documentation becomes a valuable resource and record of the situation across the country. Twitter is being used as a rapid way to disseminate similar types of news and information on voter suppression and election integrity issues. Check out Twitter Vote Report and its visualization on Plodt for more. Additional information and reports are also available on Our Vote Live, and incidents can be reported through their hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
But notice the “voter limbo” in the diagram above. After submitting one’s ballot, whether it’s paper or electronic, the vote itself essentially disappears into the election administration machinery. Is there a future opportunity there? And all the tools for education and communication, yet often voters are surprised at what they see and experience at the polling place on Election Day? What about creating tools to accurately prepare ballots and check that they will be “readable” in advance? Couldn’t this also speed up the process at polling places?
If we look at what the media is doing, CNN’s John King is showcasing the amazing possibilities of multitouch displays on the cable news channel’s Perceptive Pixel multitouch display. These possibilities expand beyond just analysis of news to also allow simulations and scenarios to be explored quickly and visually. MSNBC is now doing the same with a Microsoft Surface table in its television coverage of the election.
The candidates themselves are definitely embracing technology and the Internet, in particular Barack Obama. Taking Howard Dean’s lead from the 2004 election, his campaign has leveraged the Internet, social networking sites, and other tools to create an impressive, yet highly decentralized grassroots organization of empowered supporters, with incredible fundraising prowess to boot!
In election administration, one big concern is the bad planning, poor allocation of resources, and untrained poll workers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation agrees that “poorly-designed machines are not the only problem. Most election workers remain woefully under-trained regarding potential e-voting problems. Vendor technicians frequently have unsupervised access to voting equipment. Local election officials routinely deny attempts to examine e-voting audit data.” Can those processes be designed better?
One more opportunity for improvement in the future is addressing the lack of integration or synchronization of government services and databases which leads to many of the problems related to registration and voter purges. As Charles Owen, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the IIT Institute of Design explains, “elections are just one more thing that government manages and orchestrates. There are so many services out there, and they are so independent and so difficult to weave your way through that it would seem to me rather obvious that we will be seeing… a move to integrate a lot of this within some kind of .org or .gov part of the overall networking system.” As it is today, he says, “it’s just so out of date.”
But, we’ll talk more about the future in our last installment… in the meantime, let’s brace ourselves for tomorrow, hoping that this historic election with an anticipated record turnout unfolds without any major issues cropping up to destroy public confidence in the process and divide the country any further.
Stay tuned for “Part 3: Trends and the Future of the Voter Experience”
by 
A couple of months ago I bought a Flip Mino HD camcorder. While most camcorders are proud of their 
Inspired (or perhaps a bit scared) by the OLPC project, Asustek…began crafting its own inexpensive, low-performance computer. It, too, would be built cheaply using Linux, flash memory, and a tiny 7-inch screen. It had no DVD drive and wasn’t potent enough to run programs like Photoshop. Indeed, Asustek intended it mainly just for checking email and surfing the Web. Their customers, they figured, would be children, seniors, and the emerging middle class in India or China who can’t afford a full $1,000 laptop.
May breaks elegance down to four elements: Symmetry, Seduction, Subtraction, Sustainability. To be truly elegant, the collective execution of all four elements is required. However, there is no denying the power of “subtraction” on its own, where it is the process of “taking away” that adds value. So a cheap Netbook may not qualify as “elegant” according to May, but is is certainly striking a chord inthe marketplace. My Flip Mino certainly feels closer to “elegant” than the latest 
by 
