Fooled by best practice!

!

!

Dana Chisnell

UsabilityWorks and Center for Civic Design dana@centerforcivicdesign.org

@danachis

The eureka moment

“Choice” was the wrong choice.

The project of a lifetime

$7,000,000

What if anyone could vote on any device?

Designing for the invisible

Low literacy48% of US adults linear reading literal meaning

Best practicesEmbed assistance Include illustrations Add supplemental content Prevent unintentional voting or skipping

2007

2008

Started with best practice

Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in MedicineREALM

Participants of the REALM

Processrelated research competitors design principles sketching paper prototypes digital prototypes

Process33 sessions at least 3 iterations up to 20

The promise of “best practices”

Best practice: Someone else has made the mistakes already.

Conventions are enforced learned behavior The way things are usually done

Best practices v. conventions

ALT text

captions on videos good contrast

obviously clickable

relevant illustrations

Best practices v. conventions

scroll bar behavior

save as v. duplicate

mega menus

pull to refresh

hamburger menus

Shortcuts(that we confuse with conventions)

Avoiding reinvention

Why “choice” was bad

Voting Summary

deciding decided

Before After

Lessons learned

Before After

Before After

Before After

Trust the process

The process proved the conventions were broken

Plain interaction

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

“Best practice” is not enough.

Thank you.

Dana ChisnellCenter for Civic Design

and

dana@centerforcivicdesign.org

centerforcivicdesign.org

@danachis@ChadButterfly

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