Know your Vote
Transforming how New Yorkers access, understand and engage with electoral information.
Through this project, we address the challenges of voter engagement and accessibility in New York City, focusing on making the voting process more inclusive, informative and user-friendly. By addressing the systemic barriers to voting knowledge and participation, it builds a user-centred approach to civic engagement, one that empowers people through intuitive design, comprehensive information and inclusive communication.
Not knowing how voting works, from registering to marking a ballot, is often the main thing standing between a citizen and their vote.
The voting ecosystem in New York City is severely fragmented. Intricate electoral processes, gaps in the information on offer and plain design inefficiencies put obstacles in front of voters across different demographics, ages and languages. The effect is sharpest for first-time voters, immigrants, people with disabilities, and communities that have long been pushed to the edge of the electoral process.
To see the problem rather than assume it, we sat with participants while they used whatever they normally would, websites, flyers, social posts, to work out how to vote and who to vote for. We mapped what we saw twice over: once as an ecosystem, to show every channel and stakeholder and how they connect, and once as a service blueprint, to follow a voter through the journey step by step.
What users said?
Most election resources ask a lot of questions and do not give me the information I need.
The expectation versus reality of what I got had a huge gap. I couldn't find what I wanted, there was not much about what the candidates advocate for.
Some of the websites stress me out because there are so many tabs and so much information.
I received a flyer during election season, but it was too much information put together in a very complex manner.
Know your Vote answers the gap in two places at once: a website for people already looking, and a booth in public space for the people who are not.
Putting accessibility, clarity and engagement first, the pair is a scalable approach to voter education, and one that could be picked up and adapted by other cities.
An accessible website
- Designed for inclusivity, with support for other languages and for visual impairment.
- Simplifies the voting information and the processes behind it.
- Candidate information and resources in plain, readable terms.
An interactive booth
- A safe space for passing on knowledge and talking it through.
- Full voting and candidate information, carried by visuals and activities rather than dense text.
- Printed flyers for visitors to take away with them.
- Placed in public areas, during election season and outside it.
The two halves were built to serve a city with very different people in it, and to keep working once the election is over.
Built for public space, parks and subway stations among them, so it reaches people with limited access to technology or with physical impairments.
During an election it carries the essentials of the voting process alongside detail on each candidate, so a decision can be an informed one.
Out of season the booth becomes a third space, somewhere to say what you feel, need or fear, and keep the conversation going between elections.
Accessibility features, multiple languages and a plain, unfussy interface, so the digital half of the service excludes as few people as possible.
A space like this would be great to just encourage more conversations and make people feel heard.
This is a great way to combat information asymmetry.
I loved how intuitive the platform was. It was incredibly easy to use, and I was able to navigate it without any assistance.
