VOTE REMOTE

A Viral Campaign to Help Students Vote

RANGE OF WORK

Service Design, Interface Design, Political Action

ABOUT

Vote Remote is a new initiative by ISE, formerly Indivisible, that focuses on helping students absentee vote. Many restrictive voting laws across the country are designed to keep younger voters from casting their ballots. Vote Remote aims to tackle this challenge by creating an absentee voter portal designed for students, and by creating a student voter support network of campus political activists.  

Interface Workflow Design

Challenge

Students don’t vote enough, especially when they are away from home. How can we help them stay the course and navigate the bureaucracy that makes absentee voting so difficult?

Solution

User Research indicated that the biggest problems for voting students were (1) meeting absentee voting deadlines, (2) achieving the numerous requirements for absentee voting, like notarization and proof of residency, and (3) knowing an election was even happening. The Interface was designed to make the process of inputting a large amount of information as easy as possible, by breaking up data entry into less intimidating bites. Steps along the way are explained in plain, clear language, and the process finishes with clear instructions of what to do next.

Habit Building: A User Journey

Vote Remote’s goal is not only to help students vote in their next elections, but to teach them to be life long participants of the democratic process. To form the habit of voting and make sure students stay up to date with deadlines, vote remote was structured as a reminder system, a absentee ballot request portal, and a supportive community. Text reminders were instituted at key moments along the voting journey, reminding students to get their ballot notarized (and how to do so), or prompting them to get stamps ahead of time.

Campus Coordinator positions were created as a new support system for voting students. Campus Coordinators are students who are politically active, and volunteer to serve as voting chaperones for their peers. Campus Coordinators reach out to students at key failure points in the voting cycle to make sure students stay the course.

Collaborators

Ian Van Nest: Interface Design

Maggie George: Interface Design, Concept Design, Service Design, Storyboards