The University of Michigan has incorporated design thinking informed by behavioral insights to develop voting spaces for students — aimed at creating lifelong voters.
In addition to a history of democracy-focused initiatives on campus, this year marks the third election in which the Creative Campus Voting Project has partnered with the Ann Arbor city clerk’s office, U-M Museum of Art and the Duderstadt Center Gallery to design voting hubs on campus.
The CCVP is a nonpartisan initiative based at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, and a partner in the UMICH Votes campus coalition.
Co-led by Stamps associate professors Stephanie Rowden and Hannah Smotrich, the CCVP employs key insights from behavioral science and rigorous attention to election law, along with a range of creative approaches to create a student voter experience that is clear, trustworthy and delightful.
Registration and voting turnout among U-M students consistently exceeds national averages, according to the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement, and in the last presidential election, roughly 90% of voting-eligible students were registered.
In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the voting hubs designed by the CCVP facilitated more than 9,300 registrations and collected more than 13,000 ballots.
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Located on Central Campus at UMMA and on North Campus at the Duderstadt Center Gallery beginning Oct. 21, the hubs offer students and community members the opportunity to register, request and drop off an absentee ballot, or cast their ballot in person during the early voting period beginning Oct. 26.
Visitors encounter clear and concise information through friendly typography and playful interactive installations, and positive peer-to-peer interactions.
“From the moment a student enters the voting space, we think about what information they need, and at which point, in that process,” Smotrich said.
“And instead of experiencing a fairly dry, bureaucratic space, like they might at city hall, they enter this light-filled, glass-enclosed gallery, which is a beautiful, wonderful place to be. Clerks are ready to have one-on-one conversations with students. It’s really focused on making the process accessible, enjoyable and comprehensible.”
The inviting spaces and nonpartisan materials are intended to demystify the voting process by using conversational language and posing questions that young voters might be too embarrassed to ask. The signage aims to normalize the fact that people have questions.
“What we noticed when we looked at the behavioral science research around voting participation on campus is that many of the challenges revolve around issues of clarity and comprehension for the students,” Smotrich said.
Through many conversations with students, Smotrich and Rowden learned that students felt they were already “supposed to know” things, and so they hesitate to ask questions and risk doing nothing.
To increase approachability and comfort for students, trained peer mentors are available to help guide voters through the voting process in addition to on-site city clerk staff members.
For this presidential election, the CCVP team went to extra lengths to encourage people to make a voting plan and get started ahead of Election Day.
“As artists and designers, our work is rooted in empathy,” Rowden said. “As faculty at Stamps, our work with students offers us an important window into psychological tripping points and opportunities for new student voters. This vantage point informs all the creative interventions we design.”
Their “Voter Style” personality quiz is an example of speaking a shared language with newly eligible voters. The quiz, supported by the Arts Initiative, uses lighthearted questions to tap into behavioral tendencies and, based on those insights, generates a customized voter action plan with easy-to-follow steps.
The “personality styles” generated through the quiz are fun and humorous, ranging from a Party Puppy — one who wants to be a part of the action and take advantage of early voting — to a Slow But Steady Sea Turtle who might prefer to take their time via an absentee ballot.
“For us, this is really interesting creative research. It’s meaningful to have a direct impact,” Rowden said. “We feel really privileged to do this work.”
