Scenario

Amy Johnson is a retired school teacher. At 78, her favorite part of the year is helping to audit the local elections. While her eyesight is not what it was, she is a perfectionist and cares greatly about having the audit done as concisely as possible. A veteran election auditor, Amy is the leader of her pair of 2. This means that while a partner reads her the ballots, she is responsible for recording the information. Amy has found that the fastest way to get this process done is to read and record straight down the ballot (instead of reading a particular race on every ballot), and instructs her partner to do it in this way. Today, she is auditing the presidential election. There is both a presidential and senate race and Amy is very excited. She is given a stack of 50 ballots to audit.

Tasks:

Sign in to the secure system.
Enter 50 ballots into the system. She will enter these by ballot (i.e. enter all the votes on one ballot for every race before moving on to the next one).
Restart counting if the total does not equal 50 (i.e. they are miscounted).
Send the final 50 results to the audit supervisor.

Individual Designs

Storyboard 1 – Efficiency

	When Mrs.Johnson begins her task, this is the first scene she sees. This is just a login screen, where she can enter her username and password. When she logs in, she will be presented with her ballot-counter screen.
	In this design, all options are large buttons. After logging in, Mrs. Johnson has the option of entering votes by race or by ballot. She's always done it by ballot, so she selects that choice to move on.
	The first race of the first ballot is presented. Mrs. Johnson can then select a button. When she clicks, she will be taken to the next race on this ballot.
	The second race of the first ballot is presented. Again, Mrs. Johnson can select a button. There are back and forward arrows to allow her to fix mistakes.
	After she finishes the first ballot, she is presented with a summary screen of the ballot and the candidates she selected. She can go back to fix a mistake or just hit next to move on.
	After finishing the first ballot, she moves on to ballot number 2 and is presented with the first race again.
	She is then taken to the second race on ballot number 2.
	She hits next, after verifying the summary of ballot 2.
	Mrs. Johnson is now on the last race of the 50th ballot.
	She hits next, after verifying the summary of ballot 50.
	After she is done with 50 ballots, she can view a summary of the election and chose to either go back and fix her mistakes or continue.
	She can then choose to submit the results to her audit supervisor.
	She is then presented with a screen, allowing her to choose to continue counting another set of ballots or to finish this audit. She clicks finish.
	She is taken back to the entrance login screen.

Analysis

Of our final three designs, this one has the best efficiency.

Efficiency:

One-click process: Because the system advances as soon as any option is clicked, the user can proceed quickly without needing to select an option and then press next. One click per page is much faster than two.
Minimal text: The screen has minimal text, so it is easy for the user to scan the text and find the right option. This reduces the mental processing time required.
Ballot summary: The user has to stop and review/skim each ballot before submitting it and moving on. While this decreases efficiency, it was necessary for safety (see below).

Learnability:

Item selection: Because only one item shows up at a time, the user will quickly learn to just click the appropriate name and that the system will move on. Much of the changing between screens is done automatically, minimizing the need for users to learn system navigation.
Minimal text: Because there is very little text on each screen, the user has very few choices what to do. This makes it easy to quickly determine the right action to take.
Unclear buttons: As drawn, the users who are unfamiliar with computers may not understand that each candidate's name is a button. This is a problem with learnability particularly for our user class of older, non-tech-savy auditors.

Safety:

One-click Process: Because the system advances on any click, the user doesn’t have a chance to verify that they selected the correct option, reducing the safety.
Large Buttons: The buttons are all large, so the likelihood of accidentally clicking the wrong button will be smaller. Users will also see the button depress when clicked, so they will get that feedback about which element has been selected. These together improve the safety.
Forward/Back Buttons: If the user makes a mistake, she can chose the back button to correct it. Error correction improves safety. The forward buttons let her navigate back to her current position without reentering information – which would increase the likelihood of making another error.
Status Bar: The user can keep track of how far she is.If a ballot was missed or double-submitted, this mechanism will help catch that error. For example, if the user sees that she is entering the 3rd ballot, but the ballot number is 2, she knows that one of the ballots was not properly submitted.
Ballot summary/confirmation page: the user has the opportunity to view a summary of each ballot and make sure it is correct. This is especially important because when entering the information, there is very little feedback. So having this summary greatly increases safety and the likelihood a user will catch any errors.

Storyboard 2 – Ballot metaphor

	When Mrs.Johnson begins her task, this is the first scene she sees. To minimize confusion, there is very little text on the screen, just a spot for her to enter her username.
	Similarly, the next page just asks for her password. This way she can be validated and she will be logged in to perform her task.
	The format for this design is a similarity to a physical ballot. Hence any item with options will have the text as well as a bubble radio-button beside it. Mrs. Johnson and other users can click the button or the text to select a choice. After logging in, Mrs. Johnson has the option of entering votes by race or by ballot. She's always done it by ballot, so she selects that choice to move on.
	The first ballot now shows up and Mrs. Johnson is ready to start entering ballots. The left pane mirrors the physical ballot that she has seen. The races are in the same order, as are the candidates. Again, she can select the radio buttons or text for a given candidate. As a method of feedback, the right pane shows the current selections in each race. These are in much larger font to make it easy to quickly verify that she selected the correct candidate. After scrolling down to the bottom, Mrs. Johnson will see a back button to return to the previous screen, a continue button to move on to the next ballot, and a save button in case she has fewer than 50 ballots or needs a break. She selects continue.
	Mrs. Johnson can fill out ballot number 2 in the same manner, and she continues on.
	Mrs. Johnson is comfortable with the system and completes ballots 3-49 in the same way.
	Finally, Mrs.Johnson reaches ballot #50. This one is a bit unusual with a write-in. But similar to the paper system from past years, she merely marks that the ballot had a write-in, sets the physical one aside, and moves on.
	Mrs. Johnson now takes a moment to look over the summary of the 50 ballots she just entered. This way she can make sure the numbers seem to align with what she was entering. Seeing that these are all correct, she selects "submit these ballots" at the bottom of the screen.
	Mrs.Johnson is relieved to see that the ballots were successfully submitted. That was all she needed to do now, so she selects finish and log out.
	Seeing that the system is back to the home page, Mrs.Johnson is satisfied that she has completed her work and is safely logged out of the system. She's now ready to move on to her next task.