In another department of our megaplex one of my colleagues, Aleks Totic is working on ballot layout and design for the TrustTheVote technology suite. I came across this great blog post from the Brennan Center at NYU that describes a recent situation where it appears a simple bit of questionable (but valid) layout may have caused many voters to skip past a ballot initiative. From the conclusion of the article:

"What probably would have alerted officials to this problem ahead of time, and at little or no cost, would have been a simple usability test: observing ten or fifteen King County citizens as they "voted" on the ballot before the design was finalized. This solution is simple, easy and cheap. The Usability Professionals Association has a great explanation of how it's done." ( from Ballot Design Still Matters)

Yes, it's true, no matter how wonderful our ballot design guidelines are, and how well an automated checklist is applied to a ballot before printing, a simple usability test ("it aint rocket science") is so simple and cheap, it should never be skipped.

It's a good article: read the whole thing!

Technorati Tags: voting, ballots, design, usability, usabilitytesting