The US Elections brings to my mind some thoughts on the 'Right Design' and that 'Design' actually has the capability of 'changing history'.
In the US election 8 years ago, in the Mr George Bush Vs Al Gore the controversy in the vote count/ voting emerged in the state of Florida.
Here the whole confusion in the voting arose from a 'Defect in the design of the Ballot list ' in the voting machines. The person who was in charge of the design of Ballot List in Florida considered the font size as a crucial factor (She assumed that big font size would help the old people). Due to the increase in the font size she had to put the names of the contestents in two columns. The irony is that the step initiated to reduce the confusion and problem actually ended up causing more confusions and problems.
On the day of the elections many old people got confused by names in two columns in the ballot and ended up voting for the wrong person even though their intension was to vote for Al Gore. The whole debate of recount and law suits which followed was due to this 'design' problem. Experts say that if there were no confusions in the Florida vote counting/ casting most probably Mr Al Gore would have been the president then.
In the last elections also, IT played a major role in the victoryof the Mr Barack Obama. He had understood the strength of Web 2.0 and used it extensively as a tool for his campaigns. There is a good reading on this in this link http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212000815. It mentions the internet as the king of all political media.This can give us insight into the power of the web 2.0 in campaigns and reaching people. This will also have big impact on the design of the online applications. The web 2.0 features will be of prime importance in the design of the application and the interface.
In the US election 2008, in the Arizona elections, the online voting system was used. The online voting system is made more secure by using encryption of images using standard secure algorithm. It is also a good example of application design - how they integrated the online votes with the normal ballet papers.
