Center for Civic Design Diary Study

The Center for Civic Design aims to support democracy by ensuring voter intent through design. They aim to make every interaction between government and citizens easy, effective, and pleasant using civic design skills in research, usability, design, accessibility, and plain language to improve the voting experience, make elections easier to administer, and encourage participation in elections.

For a course in user experience research, we worked with the Center for Civic Design as our client on a two-week text- and email-based diary study researching voters’ experiences about voting and their opinions around elections. While the client was not interested in whom they intended to vote for in the 2020 elections, they were interested in understanding the experiences of voters in Baltimore with limited income and education as they prepared to vote. The client hoped to identify possible burdens in the process for this population of voters or barriers that might prevent them from participating in the voting process, as well as how these burdens or barriers may affect their enthusiasm for the civic duty of voting.

Given the increased options for how citizens voted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we discovered some unique insights. The two-week intensive diary study format allowed us to build rapport with our users and develop a strong, qualitative understanding of their individual experiences around voting, and to provide the client with ideas for further study using other research methods.

For this project, I was responsible for the presentation design, using a template from SlidesGo, in addition to an equal share of interacting with the participants, gathering their responses, evaluating and coding their responses, and creating our recommendations.

Client: Center for Civic Design
Group Members: Sharon Bildstein, Leo Buser, Sarah Gilchrist
Professor Caitlin Rinn
IDIA 642: User Experience Methods, The University of Baltimore