2) Designing for Blockchain

This was my first time designing specifically for blockchain technology. I considered a number of questions:

— Are there particular technical processes to understand and follow?

— What information does a user need to know?

— How much is too much information for blockchain newbies?

So, to ensure that what I was designing was technically feasible, yet not overwhelming to the user, I read articles, reviewed blockchain-based apps, and spoke with a software developer with blockchain experience.

3) Communicating security and trust

Not everyone is stoked about electronic federal voting. Questions constantly arose: Is it safe? Is it secure? How do I know my vote was counted? How do I keep my vote anonymous? How does the app make sure voters get only one vote?

The cornerstones of an election are legitimacy, security, trust, anonymity, and non-partisanship. So, I designed a value-based onboarding flow before signup to reassure and educate users of the app's purpose and manage expectations.

The ballot also mimics the current ballot design to address security, trust, and continuity with the paper-based design (which the app would be used alongside).

4) Presenting unbiased and organized content

It was of utmost importance as a designer, to voters, and Canadian electoral law to ensure that the design of ivote was unbiased.

This included not only colour and art direction, but also the ordering of candidates and parties to ensure that there were no implicit biases. After exploring a few different options such as alphabetization and randomized ordering, I chose to list candidates and parties in the order of current parliament standings.

An unexpected surprise during the design process was how much of a focus on content and UX writing this project was. It was an interesting challenge to communicate important and sometimes complex information in a clear and succinct way with minimal button clicks as possible.

5) Awareness of multiple states

ivote was designed with four specific user states of not registered to vote, registered to vote, not voted, voted.

Not all voters would come to the app at the same stage. Some users may have voted in a previous election and may already be registered on the List of Electors, some users may have never registered before, some users may be returning to vote after registering and learning about candidates at an early time.

Canadian federal elections periods are time-bound (every four years) and not indefinite, like most app uses. I considered that ivote would have different states based on Election stages (pre-election, election opens, election closed, post-election, off-season), and focused on the open election period.