My design teacher is awesome
First of all, I'm thrilled to find that my final class only has 3 lessons, rather than the 6 I had previously assumed it would have. So now I'm not nearly as concerned about finishing by my April deadline. Whew! That's a relief and a half right there.
I started reading my first lesson today (yes, I know I said I was going to start yesterday - or was it Firday? - but I got sidetracked with camera lens shopping and website hacking. I wasn't doing the hacking - a site I help with was hacked for the second time in as many months. Blah.), and in the intro section, the teacher used a particular example of bad layout design that had me giggling in agreement.
His example? The butterfly ballot used in the 2000 presidential election in Florida's Broward county. I'm even going to inclue the animated gif used, because it rocks.
And the text:
Even an optimist would admit that the 2000 U.S. presidential election in Florida had problems. A dispute over the number of votes cast for candidates George Bush and Al Gore prolonged the election by months. Votes were counted and re-counted until the result was decided. Everyone in the States certainly had (and has) an opinion on which party or group was responsible for the debacle: Republicans, Democrats, seniors, Supreme Court judges-the list goes on.
The votes that were actually cast, however, painted a different picture. It took an atrociously bad layout design to really foul things up. The culprit? A poorly-designed ballot with alignment issues, called the "butterfly ballot," was certainly the most important ingredient in the nightmare that ensued.
Take a look at the punch holes in the middle of the ballot card above.
Analysts of the 2000 election now believe that as many as 4,000 people made the error of punching the second hole on the ballot, in the mistaken belief that the second hole represented the second candidate. In addition, more than 19,000 people made the error of punching more than one hole, since more than one hole was placed directly alongside each candidate's name. In the final vote tally, George Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Doing the math: a simple layout design mistake likely changed the outcome of the election.
Let's analyze the problem. The ballot holes were poorly aligned with the rows containing the candidates' names. Proper alignment ensures that associated elements are lined up along common rows or columns. Alignment creates a sense of cohesion and unity. It contributes to a design's overall stability and aesthetic attraction and is a powerful tool for leading a viewer through a design. On the offending ballot, alignment was sorely lacking. Better proximity and clear grouping couldn't have hurt, either.
Why were the ballot designers unable to see the problem? A competent designer would have predicted this outcome from just a glance at the ballot, but even a beginner should have had enough sense to user test the design before its release. User testing was not done in this case, and a serious miscarriage of thousands of voters' wishes resulted. No matter what your politics, this type of layout design should be run out of town on a rail!
Let me just nod vigorously, because yes. No matter what side people were on, there was no denying the fact that the ballot was a royal mess, and people's votes did not go to the candidate intended. Hell, if I'd been voting with that thing, I might have screwed up and punched the wrong hole, too, and I'm not 80 years old and half-blind! (Well, maybe a quarter blind, but still.)
I'm not big on politics, don't really like to get into discussions about it or arguments. I believe everyone has a right to their opinions, and to vote for whomever they want without having to feel like they must defend their choice, or be villified for it. But I still can't help thinking sometimes about how different things might be today if Broward had just used a different kind of ballot. *sigh* It's amazing how something so simple made such a huge impact.
I probably should have kept this all to myself. Like I said, I'm really not a fan of politics, and generally prefer to keep my opinions to myself. But when I read this part of the lesson, I was just too amused to leave it alone. So forgive me for sharing, if you're offended by it in any way. No harm was intended at all, I swear!
Random subject change: there was just a squirrel on the tree outside my window, but by the time I got my camera, it was gone. :( Darn it. It's a gross, gloomy day out today, so I haven't had much chance to play around with it yet. And I'm still undecided on what to do about lenses. There are 2 I want - one I'll get now and one I'll ask for for my birthday. I just can't decide which to get when. Or if I can even wait, and would rather get both at once. I did my taxes today, and had a slightly bigger refund than expected, so I have some extra money.... eh. I'll decide tomorrow. I'm waiting for someone on eBay to answer a question about one first. I'm a little hesitant about trusting an eBay seller, though, so most likely I'll end up going with the Amazon ones. I trust Amazon more, and their prices are the lowest I've found (other than some eBay listings).
I started reading my first lesson today (yes, I know I said I was going to start yesterday - or was it Firday? - but I got sidetracked with camera lens shopping and website hacking. I wasn't doing the hacking - a site I help with was hacked for the second time in as many months. Blah.), and in the intro section, the teacher used a particular example of bad layout design that had me giggling in agreement.
His example? The butterfly ballot used in the 2000 presidential election in Florida's Broward county. I'm even going to inclue the animated gif used, because it rocks.
And the text:
Even an optimist would admit that the 2000 U.S. presidential election in Florida had problems. A dispute over the number of votes cast for candidates George Bush and Al Gore prolonged the election by months. Votes were counted and re-counted until the result was decided. Everyone in the States certainly had (and has) an opinion on which party or group was responsible for the debacle: Republicans, Democrats, seniors, Supreme Court judges-the list goes on.
The votes that were actually cast, however, painted a different picture. It took an atrociously bad layout design to really foul things up. The culprit? A poorly-designed ballot with alignment issues, called the "butterfly ballot," was certainly the most important ingredient in the nightmare that ensued.
Take a look at the punch holes in the middle of the ballot card above.
Analysts of the 2000 election now believe that as many as 4,000 people made the error of punching the second hole on the ballot, in the mistaken belief that the second hole represented the second candidate. In addition, more than 19,000 people made the error of punching more than one hole, since more than one hole was placed directly alongside each candidate's name. In the final vote tally, George Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Doing the math: a simple layout design mistake likely changed the outcome of the election.
Let's analyze the problem. The ballot holes were poorly aligned with the rows containing the candidates' names. Proper alignment ensures that associated elements are lined up along common rows or columns. Alignment creates a sense of cohesion and unity. It contributes to a design's overall stability and aesthetic attraction and is a powerful tool for leading a viewer through a design. On the offending ballot, alignment was sorely lacking. Better proximity and clear grouping couldn't have hurt, either.
Why were the ballot designers unable to see the problem? A competent designer would have predicted this outcome from just a glance at the ballot, but even a beginner should have had enough sense to user test the design before its release. User testing was not done in this case, and a serious miscarriage of thousands of voters' wishes resulted. No matter what your politics, this type of layout design should be run out of town on a rail!
Let me just nod vigorously, because yes. No matter what side people were on, there was no denying the fact that the ballot was a royal mess, and people's votes did not go to the candidate intended. Hell, if I'd been voting with that thing, I might have screwed up and punched the wrong hole, too, and I'm not 80 years old and half-blind! (Well, maybe a quarter blind, but still.)
I'm not big on politics, don't really like to get into discussions about it or arguments. I believe everyone has a right to their opinions, and to vote for whomever they want without having to feel like they must defend their choice, or be villified for it. But I still can't help thinking sometimes about how different things might be today if Broward had just used a different kind of ballot. *sigh* It's amazing how something so simple made such a huge impact.
I probably should have kept this all to myself. Like I said, I'm really not a fan of politics, and generally prefer to keep my opinions to myself. But when I read this part of the lesson, I was just too amused to leave it alone. So forgive me for sharing, if you're offended by it in any way. No harm was intended at all, I swear!
Random subject change: there was just a squirrel on the tree outside my window, but by the time I got my camera, it was gone. :( Darn it. It's a gross, gloomy day out today, so I haven't had much chance to play around with it yet. And I'm still undecided on what to do about lenses. There are 2 I want - one I'll get now and one I'll ask for for my birthday. I just can't decide which to get when. Or if I can even wait, and would rather get both at once. I did my taxes today, and had a slightly bigger refund than expected, so I have some extra money.... eh. I'll decide tomorrow. I'm waiting for someone on eBay to answer a question about one first. I'm a little hesitant about trusting an eBay seller, though, so most likely I'll end up going with the Amazon ones. I trust Amazon more, and their prices are the lowest I've found (other than some eBay listings).