Interactions - November/December 2012

by allowing space for selection while minimizing the chance that a voter’s finger inadvertently rolls outside the button area. This allows the voter’s finger to roll up, down, left, or right upon selecting the button while providing ample space between the text and the top or bottom of the surrounding buttons. Once a selection is made, a checkmark appears beside the user’s selection, providing a visual confirmation of the selection (Figure 5b). If checkboxes must be used, we recommend design option 2. Both the checkbox and text are vertically centered and left-justified (Figure 5c).

3. Everett, S. P. The usability of electronic voting machines and how votes can be changed without detection. Doctoral Dissertation, Rice University, 2007. 4. Doyle, P. Judges rule Franken winner; Coleman to appeal. April 5, 2009; http://www.startribune. com/politics/national/senate/ 42932907.html 5. Sesto, M., Irwin, C., Chen, K., Amrish, C., and Douglas, W. Effect of touch screen button size and spacing on touch characteristics of users with and without disabilities. The Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 54, 3 (2012), 425-436.

Implications

Electronic ballot design is a subset
of user interface design, and like
any other type of interface design,
design principles and usability
testing are essential for providing
voters with effective and efficient
systems. The EAC provides a guide
for designing electronic ballots
for DRE systems; however, the
guide does not include detailed
recommendations for the lay-
out of controls, related text, and
objects with which a voter must
interact. Our research supports
the hypothesis that placement of
text affects how users interact
with an electronic voting system.
Therefore, as in West Virginia,
poor placement of text could
potentially leave voters vulnerable
to unintentional selections of can-
didates. Prior research has shown
that nearly half of voters do not
notice such anomalies, which may
affect the outcome of an election
[ 2, 3]. Subsequently, the results
of this research suggest that in
addition to the design recom-
mendations provided by the EAC,
recommendations are needed that
focus on the placement of controls
and related text and objects, as
they may influence how voters
interact with the electronic bal-
lot interface presented to them.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Juan E. Gilbert is the IDEaS Professor and chair of the Human-Centered Computing Division in the School of Computing at Clemson University.

He is the principal investigator on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Accessible Voting Technology Initiative and the lead for the Research for Alliance for Accessible Voting (RAAV).

Aqueasha M. Martin is a Ph.D.
candidate in the School of
Computing at Clemson University.
Her research interests include
human-computer interaction,
health informatics, and informa-
tion retrieval. She is interested in
the ways that technology can be designed and
used to promote and inform healthy living.

Gregory Rogers is a lead ETL
developer for Chevron. In this
position, he designs, builds, tests,
and maintains databases. He
graduated from Auburn University
with a master’s degree in comput-
er science and a bachelor’s
degree in software engineering. His interests
include spoken language systems, usability, multi-
modal interfaces, human-computer interaction, and
databases. Jerome McClendon is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Computing at Clemson University, where he is a member of the Cyber Innovations Lab. He received a B. S. and M.S. in com- puter science from Auburn University. His interests include spoken-language systems, machine learning, and natural language processing.

Joshua Ekandem is pursuing a
Ph.D. in human-centered comput-
ing in the School of Computing at
Clemson University. Joshua’s
research interests include the
design and development of natu-
ral user interfaces, especially in
automotive and mobile contexts. He is interested in
achieving natural user interaction through multi-
modal interfaces and culturally situated design
frameworks.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of, or a position that is endorsed by, EAC or the Federal government.

This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers IIS-0738175. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

ENDNOTES:

1. U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Effective Designs for the Administration of Federal Elections. U. S. Election Assistance Commission, Washington, DC, 2007.

2. Campbell, B. A. and Byrne, M.D. Now do voters notice review screen anomalies? A look at voting system usability. Proc. of the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/ Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE ‘09).