Back in 2007, Oxide had the honor of being on AIGA’s Design for Democracy (DFD) team that developed a set of national ballot design guidelines adopted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Since then, I’ve been serving as the Design Director of election design for DFD. Much of that work has centered around advocating ballot design best practices to states and local jurisdictions, in an effort to implement the standards we developed. In the past year, it also led to working with the New York State Board of Elections on a redesign of their voter registration form.

It’s the perfect project for us to fully utilize our information design expertise. There’s nothing aesthetic or gimmicky about form design — it’s exclusively centered around creating the easiest experience for the user. For the design of the voter registration form, we threw out the previous layout and started over with a clean slate. Our process involved determining how a user goes about completing the form, and then facilitating that activity. The primary objective is to maximize the number of users that fill out the form completely and accurately, without confusion or trepidation.

Previous New York State voter registration form, before Oxide's redesign

The improved New York State voter registration form, after Oxide's redesign

We love form design, so this project was as fulfilling as it was challenging. Plus, it allowed us another opportunity to practice the strategies outlined in our EAC guidelines document:

1. labeling and clearly designating each section

2. allowing adequate space for each piece of information

3. relocating vital instructions in-context within the form

4. limiting ourselves to just three weights of one typeface (Univers)

Aside from general usability, we addressed some specific shortfalls of the previous form, including:

1. underscoring the importance of the qualifying questions (1 and 2)

2. minimizing the prominence of the “For board use only” box.

3. clarifying county versus country in the address sections

4. clearly differentiating current, mailing, and previous addresses

5. integrating the optional questions as part of the form

We completely rewrote all of the instructions with the assistance of simple language experts — the intent being to simplify the language to the lowest reading level possible, so the form is usable by the largest percentage of the population. (Versions were also built in Spanish, Chinese, and Korean, the most prevalent foreign languages in the state.) Different iterations of the form were also tested for usability with small focus groups (by Dana Chisnell of Usability Works), and edited based on feedback from the testers.

All told, almost 3 million of the new registration forms were printed for distribution throughout the state. We’re also working with the State to develop an online PDF version of the form. If you’re a resident of New York State, check their site in the coming weeks to download the form or request a printed version.