This project began as an assignment for one of my courses at ITP. The objective was to take a "holistic look at the voting experience," and then answer the following questions: "How can this service be realigned to better support the user experience and decision making process? What touchpoints provide the greatest opportunities to improve the experience? What interfaces, devices, products or artifacts are needed?" We were encouraged to explore solutions even if they presented significant technical challenges or complex security requirements.

In class we discussed several existing projects including Design for Democracy, Help America Vote Act and Election Protection. Mary Quandt, a research and usability specialist working on a ballot design project with AIGA came to speak to our class. We also had several readings and discussions about service design.

We followed up these disucssions, readings and presentations by developing customer journey maps of the voting process, breaking down the service layers, generating user scenarios and examinging user access points. In addition, we discussed how the idea of seamful architecture might contribute to the design of a new voting service.

To this I added my own research. I conducted an informal participatory design session with several NYC residents who work for government or municipal services and think tanks; and I attended New York City's recent open forum and presentation of electronic voting systems, a project initiated by Mayor Bloomberg who has taken a special interest in electronic voting.

The result from this project is the proposal for an informed voter service.