Episode 12 - Whitney Quesenbery on Voter Experience and Civic Design

The election season is upon us, and we are already experiencing the impact of poor design. Not that bad design and voting is anything new. We all know that elections can be plagued by poor design and processes that are difficult to understand, like the Iowa caucuses.

Enter Whitney Quesenbery and the Center for Civic Design. Whitney has had a long and influential career in user experience. The author of three books on UX, Whitney has been involved in a lot of projects aimed at making things more usable. But perhaps none of her work is as important as her co-founding and co-directing the Center for Civic Design. Whitney talks about her unintended introduction into the world of experience design through a theater class, her early work in UX as being user-centric, and how a committee assignment through the Usability Professionals Association led to her life's work on civic design and voting experiences. Listen to her talk about the UX tragedy of the 'butterfly ballot' in the 2000 election, how big experiences come from simple changes, and what people can do to help design better elections.

Episode Intro Music - The Tall Pines - “The Key”

Episode Ending Music - Ketsa - ”Dreaming Days”