Dana Chisnell is the person federal and state election officials call on when they need to do something about ballot usability and design.
Dana has trained more than a thousand election officials to test the design of their ballots to avoid costly mistakes and unwarranted attention. She’s given highly rated presentations and workshops for a dozen state election departments and conferences, as well as NASED and IACREOT.
Dana works extensively with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducting applied research. You may have seen the results of Dana and Dr. Janice C. Redish’s 2-year, in-depth study looking at ballot instructions across the country, where they established best practices for the use of plain language in ballots.
Following on the success of that project, with the expert technical editor Susan Becker, Dana developed style guidelines for system documentation for voting systems. She also developed the usability testing methodology now included in the VVSG human factors test suite for poll worker usability. She’s currently working with NIST to verify the usability and accessibility tests for certifying voting systems to VVSG 2.1.
Recently, Dana completed a usability study to redesign the Federal Post Card Application and the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot for the Federal Voting Assistance Program.
She is currently researching the best methods of conducting user research and usability testing for social media.
As a member of the Brennan Center for Justice’s ballot design task force, Dana advises on plain language, ballot design, and usability testing. She’s also one of the leaders of the Usability in Civic Life Project, which developed the LEO Usability Testing Kit, a simple training tool for local election officials.
In 2007, the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA) sought Dana’s expertise on the research methods behind their ground-breaking Design for Democracy project, the EAC’s Effective Designs for the Administration of Federal Elections.
For 5 years, Dana served as the mayor’s appointee to the San Francisco Ballot Simplification Committee. This body is unique in the nation, chartered with writing clear, objective, and unbiased instructions and summaries of ballot measures to be included in Voter Information Pamphlets for each city-county election.
Somewhere in there, she found time to co-author, along with Jeff Rubin, the Handbook of Usability Testing Second Edition. She now travels the world, looking for new ways to help voters get their intended votes counted.
Twitter: @danachis
About the design
This WordPress template was developed by the wonderful people at Oxide Design Co. in Omaha, Nebraska. The design is based on the design specifications set out in the EAC’s Effective Designs for the Administration of Federal Elections. Clever, no?