Center for Civic Design

Our mission is summed up in our slogan, democracy is a design problem, and the opening words of our site: Ensuring voter intent through design.

Our goal is to make every interaction between government and citizens easy, effective, and pleasant.

We bring civic design skills in research, usability, design, accessibility, and plain language to improve the voting experience, make elections easier to administer, and encourage participation in elections.

Through our work, we have helped hundreds of election officials build their skills and capacity, and touched millions of voters in small but important ways.

Across all of our projects, our research suggests that the voter journey—all of the information, decisions, interactions that get a voter from an intention to vote to actually casting a ballot—is a story of seemingly small barriers that can add up to a vote not cast. By smoothing out those barriers, our work can help more people vote, increasing participation in democracy. 

Visit us online at civicdesign.org or Twitter