How I created the vision for the next Digital Voting System, that America needs

“We The People” Prototype Creation with Sketch

5 min readOct 16, 2020

Product Goals:

This project seeks to eliminate: discrimination, voter intimidation, and provide the most secure authentication platform that is inclusive of every single American.

Project Background:

I recently completed a course on User Interface Design and chose the user problem of “Voting in America” as my case study throughout this course. In this article, I will walk you through my creative process of how I developed a prototype for a Digital Voting Application made for elections in the United States.

My Role Breakdown:

What is the problem I am trying to solve?

Voting in America. Voting in the United States has never been more complicated! Currently, there is no safe or trusted way to vote whether it’s online, by mail, or in person! And honestly, it’s all so confusing.

Sketches

“Concept Drawing”

Initially, I used these sketches to perform user research by creating a prototype with Marvel and asking neighbors and others how they would like to vote this coming election!

Key Take-Aways

Users only wanted to vote by mail and not online
To prevent users from voting more than once (in-person and by mail) I needed to rework the authentication flow based on how the voting system currently works.
Then, I realized the current voting process is intentionally difficult for citizens to vote especially for those who do not possess a photo ID or are homeless
I refactored the entire application to use biometric authentication which would consolidate the voter onboarding process from a six-step process to a two-step process!

Information Flow of the current voting process

Who needs to collect so much information, just to have a right to vote! Streamline it!

Ballot Layout Ideas

Design Considerations for Candidate Cards

Additional Candidate Card Design Considerations….

For the candidate cards, it was difficult to pick the right color scheme because the colors in our democracy have such strong symbolism. Ultimately, I decided to decouple the red and blue colors from the candidate cards to make for a more fluid color scheme.

Kiosk Design Layout

For users who are more familiar with traditional in-person voting machines, trying to learn how to use a new voting system on election day, can be overwhelming. With this design consideration, I tried to recreate the same motion and look and feel of the more traditional in-person voting systems.

Why should Americans embrace this solution?

Building The Case.

Security.

Experience the most secure user authentication process in the world. Say goodbye to traditional signature verification, this system uses biotechnology to capture a live scan of the user’s face and does a deep comparison between the user’s photo identification presented and their face scan. The live video face scan prevents users from using deep fakes to commit voter fraud. In addition, the kiosk will offer a live palm scanning feature as a second layer of security. This method of deep authentication is not my intellectual property, though it is cutting edge as of January 2020, and countries around the world are using this method of authentication globally for Visa and Immigration purposes, Border Control, National Digital Identities, Banking, and even Voting. For additional information on this technology, check out iProov and their patented technology here at iProov.com .

2. Accessibility

Users no longer have to rely on being able to physically show up at their registered voting location. This means, voters who may usually have a hard time getting to the polls because of demanding work hours or long lines, now can complete the process from virtually anywhere. This solution is standardized across device platforms, including mobile, desktop, and in-person kiosks. In addition, the seamless touch screen experience is physically more accessible than the action of manually filling out a paper ballot with a pen.

3. Inclusive

Voter intimidation has been around as long as our democracy has been established. Regardless of who is in office and who is running in the next election, Gerrymandering and voter intimidation is not a new concept as of 2020. Digital voting enables users to feel comfortable casting their votes. Voters will not have to worry about feeling intimidated at the polls or being refused the right to vote.

4. Verified

Sure, voting feels good! It makes us really feel like when we hit that “CAST VOTE” button, that our voice was heard and that our vote really counted! But, how do you really know your vote counted? Most polling booths are writing your Ballot selections to an Excel spreadsheet, and if there are any issues processing your selections, you would never know about it. With this new Digital Voting system, you can be confident that your vote counted. When you complete the voting process you will receive a digital receipt of your ballot selections. In addition, users can choose to share their voting receipt on social media and store for their own personal records.