No Post for You (Part 5)

No Post for You (Part 4)

No Post for You (Part 3)

No Post for You (Part 2)

No Post for You...

It's the money, stupid

This summer I've been doing an independent study on how the Internet and technology can be used to improve volunteer coordination in political campaigns. Not surprisingly, conducting research in this area has been a little difficult, since most of the articles I've read focused on the power of the Internet in terms of fundraising.

I've been lucky enough to conduct interviews with volunteer coordinators from several of the national campaigns though, and have found their comments on this topic to be quite interesting. Most of the books and articles I had read said that the major prerequisite for a strong online campaign was having a strong basic campaign message. Basically, have your ducks in a row before you attempt to try something new and innovative.

However, when I asked this question in one of my interviews, I got a surprising, yet quite understandable answer. Money. The person I was interviewing commented that most campaigns would love to do things like equip all of their canvassers with PDAs, but they simply don't have the funds. "Sometimes it's hard enough finding money to feed volunteers pizza," he stated.

I think sometimes when we're talking about all the wonderful possibilities that our out there for the world of technology and politics, sometimes we forget even the most basic things, like how difficult it can be to do some of these creative things just because of lack of funds. None of the articles nor books that I had read addressed this obvious limitation.

I suppose the silver lining to this anecdote is that technology becomes less expensive as it starts to become more prevalent, so hopefully in the future we'll reach a point where all campaigns will be able to creatively use technology without worrying too much about the associated costs.

Not all Internet Users are created equal...

Most people do not take into consideration that not all Internet users are created equal. In Jakob Nielsen's article, "Lower Literacy Users", he cites, "According to the U.S. Department of Education's National Adult Literacy Survey, 48% of the U.S. population has low literacy.
Based on the available information about Internet participation at different education levels, I estimate that 30% of Web users have low literacy. "

Thus, websites must be designed to aid such a large amount of users and their needs. According to Nielsen, such implementation tactics that will increase usability for lower literacy users include: simplifying the text, prioritizing the information, avoiding text that moves or changes, streamline the page design, simplify navigation, and optimize search.

Usability for people with lower literacy is especially important for government, health, employment, and mass marker producers' websites, as those with lower literacy are more likely to visit those particular types of sites.

Designing websites malleable to people with lower literacy skills is important not only because it helps those particular users, but will increase usability for all visitors.