LA County Voting System — Designing and building a modular voting system with a focus on accessibility
CHALLENGE
Re-design the entire voting experience for every type of voter in America’s largest jurisdiction.
CLIENT
Los Angeles County
YEAR
2015
Los Angeles County represents the largest voting jurisdiction in the United States, with nearly 5 million registered voters. To revamp its antiquated voting system that dates back to the 1960s, LA County hired IDEO to build its next-generation replacement, a modular system that could address the complexities unique to their voter base.
One of the main design requirements was to build a system that could be useful and accessible to all types of voters– those who are vision and hearing impaired, in wheelchairs, have learning disabilities, are unfamiliar with technology, speak languages other than English. Voters of all ages and backgrounds needed to be designed for.
As an interaction and software designer on the project, I worked on:
01
Designing an intuitive and accessible touch screen interface
02
Designing the audio + touchpad voting experience for the vision impaired
03
Developing the software and ballot machine prototypes to modularly support the designed touch and audio interfaces in 11+ languages
04
Integrating the software with hardware components of the ballot marking device (Lights, Sound, Arduino, Serial Server, Scanner, Printer)
05
Live prototyping at community centers in Los Angeles County with different focus groups to test for accessibility (i.e. blind, handicapped, cerebral palsy, amputees)
PRESS
A New Way to Vote for the People of Los Angeles - IDEO Case Study
Voting Needs a Serious Overhaul...And LA Might Have the Solution - Fast Co. Design
Redesigning the Future of Voting with LA County – CBS This Morning
Touchscreen ballots and a choice in polling stations could be the future of voting in L.A. County - Los Angeles Times
In Los Angeles, Voting is Getting the Silicon Valley Treatment – Bloomberg Businessweek