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Last year, the folks at UX Collective invited me to contribute to their annual State of UX report. They asked for my thoughts on the topic of “reimagining the information architecture of our field to nurture our path forward.” You can see the results of our exchange in the report above and (more succinctly) in an article titled Rediscovering Information Architecture.
In that article, I mentioned the 2020 U.S. presidential election as a catalyst for discussions about the role of information systems in our society. The election is a major social event primarily conducted within information environments. Its consequences can hardly be overstated. And yet, we already see signs of flawed approaches towards this critical undertaking.
For most of our history, voting has happened through analog means. The word ballot comes from the Italian ballotta, a small ball used in voting. Dropping one or another ball into a container is a physical, analog act. But the balls themselves don’t matter; it’s what they represent that makes a difference: the number of balls of one kind versus another determines who wins. Information.
In our heavily digitized world, it’s easy to look at traditional information processing activities and see inefficiencies. Computers are much faster than humans at counting and communicating results — especially if current approaches involve cumbersome analog processes. Conditioned by market forces, our impulse is towards innovation and optimization — towards disruption.
But some things should not be disrupted. Elections is one of them.
Last week, both major U.S. political parties held important caucuses in Iowa. The Democrats’ process — which was reliant on a new and (apparently) untested app — was a fiasco. Nearly everything that could go wrong did. The New York Times has published an overview of the problems. The hit to the Democrats’ reputation could influence the outcome of the election in November.
To many UX designers, the list of problems with the Iowa caucus app will look familiar: it’s fraught with unrealistic deadlines and a lack of adequate testing or training. This cavalier approach to the design and development of information systems would be expectable for a tech startup trying to disrupt their domain, but not politics.
As our society undergoes tumultuous change, we must strive to move more slowly and deliberately — especially in domains that affect the direction of society, where we must question the wisdom of replacing long-standing processes that have evolved to fit their contexts. When we do intervene, we must carefully research, design, test, refine, and then test again.
In short, we must adopt a more long-term view and aspire to become better stewards of our information ecosystems. As I’ve said before, “move fast and break things” is a disastrous approach if the thing that breaks is society itself.
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