My state’s presidential primary was held yesterday, and the experience of casting a ballot (or mine, at least) was a lesson in the dangers of not having enough faith in one’s audience.

Now, it should be said that the process as a whole was pleasant and efficient in all other respects–even though I had to go through the “extra” registration process (I’d moved since the last election). Very helpful, smiling people at every turn. Great job!

But when I was got to my booth and opened my ballot, it was obviously the product of a bureaucratic design process. The actual “fill in the space next to the candidate of your choice” concept was familiar, well laid out and free of ambiguity (no chads to be left dangling here). Anyone, and I mean ANYONE would instantly recognize what was expected of them within a second of looking at this.

That is, unless it was accompanied by paragraphs full of explanatory small print. Certainly, some of it could’ve been useful to a new voter (i.e. “Do not mark next to more than one name . . . ballots with multiple marks will be disregarded.”), but the rest of it only made me more uncertain that I was doing this correctly. In the end, I’m sure I did it right (phew!), but what should’ve taken 15 seconds ended up taking about a minute. Still time well spent, unless one considers what an extra 45 seconds per voter adds up to over a 13-hour polling period. Lines? You betcha.

So when designing a process, I urge you: Have faith in your users! When you’ve managed to make your design intuitive to the end-user (be it ballot, website, hardware or software), STOP! Once the message has been communicated clearly, have the presence of mind to realize it, or risk re-cluttering.