Clear issue is that why are these not separate systems or pages entirely. Registering for this process should be entirely separate from using it. And if also paper forms are accepted, whole process should need more tracking from canditate.
That site clearly had UX issues and I'm glad it was redesigned, but I disagree with your statement in principle. I think it would actually be great for democracy if every time you were asked to support some official, you had a call-to-action for taking their role.
On that note, I don't see any issue whatsoever with 82 people running for presidency - why not more? "Politics are too serious a matter to be left to politicians" -Charles de Gaulle
For a country whose population is just 399,189 (according to 2024 census), I don't think what you propose is necessary.
Edit to add: I'm not sure if you added the "or pages" later or if I just missed it when replying, but my response was specifically about the suggestion that they should be separate systems. Separate pages totally makes sense, and I do think that's a good solution.
Yeah, it was actually neatly resolved here by applying separation of concerns and just doing the totally different things on different pages. People wanting to endorse a candidate are not the same as people wanting to be a candidate.
I remember watching a bit on TV years ago about the president of Iceland flying commercially just like any other passenger. I thought at the time there was no way the president of a country really flew around like that. Years later I found myself sitting behind the president of the Turks and Caicos islands on a commercial flight and thought, "huh, I guess I was wrong."
The Prime Minister of Singapore, a country that could very easily afford a fleet of private jets if they wanted to, travels on Singapore Airlines. If you're a frequent flyer based on Singapore, running into extra security because he's on board is a not-uncommon occurrence.
Singapore also specifically prides itself on its airline being rated one of the best in the world. Though I don't think the Emir of Dubai flies Emirates.
A little related: during the 2008 economic meltdown, the finance minister of Iceland was about to fly out of the country to meet other FM's and talk about the crisis. He was wondering if he should take cash with him, so worried he was that credit cards would stop working...
A lot of leaders of smaller countries don't bother with most of the VIP treatment we see from the big ones. If the country is relatively at internal and external peace there isn't all that much danger to their safety.
I don't think people realize how tiny the population of Iceland is. For some perspective, Detroit's population is 60% higher. The mayor of Austin TX governs over double the citizens as Iceland's president.
My question is how you recognised the president of the Turks and Caicos islands - I'm certainly not qualified to pick him out in a crowd! Perhaps you live on said islands?
Here in New Zealand there is a military transport option but it's always breaking down and, by all accounts, nowhere near as comfortable as a commercial carrier.
The current president of Mexico, at the beginning flew commercial flights but after a year or two he got tired of the sneering and insults (well deserved).
I was flying once with the president of the EU commission that time, a socialist Portuguese. The highest ranking European. I loved Barroso. Two rows ahead of me, and a lot of people started talking to him.
3. And if they do read something, they don't understand what they read, either because it's poorly written or because they start from different assumptions than the ones the writer had in mind.
I like to think about design as a communication medium.
So for most stuff the manual goes straight to the shelf. Unless it is something particularly powerful or complex, I see having to refer to the manual as a failure in UX design.
Is there any point in tattooing it on the back of the hands of people who don't read?
That said, https://readabilityformulas.com/readability-scoring-system.p... is a good sanity check. Over half of people can't read text above a grade 8 readability. Worse yet, we aren't conscious of the effort that reading takes. Not until we are struggling. So competent people have little sense of the barriers they create.
For a clear illustration of how much that ballot screwed Al Gore, look at Pat Buchanan's vote in Palm Beach county, compared to every other county. He clearly got 2000+ votes that were meant for Al Gore. Gore lost by less that 550 votes.
I keep on noticing moments bad UX creeping into apps, more and more, for little possible benefit. Do frontend people simply not think about 2nd and 3rd order consequences anymore?
Here's an example: Disappearing affordances. For some reason, the button to remove the background from Google Meet went from being its own "Remove Background" button, to all background thumbnails becoming a toggle button.
This is fine, so long as the selected background is visible. But if it's not, perhaps because the selected background is outside the viewport of the scrollable selector, then what's happened, is that the affordance of the "Remove Background" button simply disappeared.
The thing that surprises me the most is the page is in English. I know nearly everyone in Iceland is very fluent in English, but they all speak and read Icelandic too.
That's very common in smaller countries. The government exists to serve its citizens, not the other way around. When you know a significant minority is less than fluent in your somewhat-obscure local language, providing a translation for that minority is almost a no-brainer.
For example: I am a Dutch citizen. Due to the European Union I have the right to live and work in Iceland. If I were to move there, I'd gain the right to vote in local elections (not national ones, gotta be a citizen for that) - without speaking a word of Icelandic. I'd also have to do taxes, renew my driver's license, and all the other government stuff.
Either I and the thousands like me are going to use Google Translate and screw it up, or they'll just have one of the many bilingual workers provide an official translation. It makes a lot of sense to just translate all official government pages, making an exception for this specific page is probably more work than just translating it too.
Also because Europe, thanks to the frequency of jus sanguine, people like me can be born and raised in Canada but be a citizen of some European country because my parents were born in its predecessor country many decades ago. So I’m eligible to vote (tho I don’t), but minimally speak that language and have spent minimal time there.
I’d also assume Google Translate will do better translating from English to $OtherLanguage than Icelandic to $OtherLanguage. So makes sense to put up a translation into English (or other common language) and make sure it’s correct.
However, it does have an "EN" button near the top right. Personally, I think this is as close to a perfect solution as you can get. (Geolocating an IP or something has a whole bunch of problems than just going with your country's official language as a default.)
English has become entrenched as the de facto second official language of Iceland. It's a very depressing trend for the conservation of Icelandic, and the ongoing promotion of English will only continue to exacerbate its decline.
I remember in the 80s when the Nordic TeX Users Group was formed, they did all of their official communications in English so as not to privilege any of the national languages of their membership.
Similarly, English is a standard language in India in part because of the linguistic diversity of the country¹ and being an outsider language means that communications in English don’t privilege any of the indigenous ethnic groups, although it seems that English usage has been dropping in favor of English.
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1. English usage was supposed to have been phased out fifteen years after independence, but the mandated sunset was changed by constitutional amendment in 1963 (apparently a year after the sunset date(!)). India has 22 scheduled languages—i.e., languages receiving constitutional recognition and encouragement—but there are 122 major languages with more than 10,000 speakers. I think India wins the prize for the greatest linguistic diversity among the nations of the world.
In the redesigned version, the “Log in” button has been replaced by a link that reads, “establish a collection of endorsements,” which is much, much clearer.
That seems unnecessarily verbose, and still slightly ambiguous. How about "Endorse a Candidate" and "Become a Candidate"?
This would help a bit, but loads of people still see a button and click the button without realizing what they click on. It's best to keep stuff as far away as possible, especially when one of the actions is to become the potential president of Iceland
Honestly this is worse than a "design issue" of the button styles or "people not reading" here.
"Register to collect endorsements" does not explicitly say whose endorsements. It is possible to read this sentence as a (slightly odd) way to say "Register to have your endorsements collected".
"Collect" is a rather ambiguous verb, if I saw a button on a different website saying "register to collect favorites", I would understand that the website is building the collection, from my clicking on items... not that others will fav my profile.
"Register as a candidate to collect endorsements" would have been much clearer, whether the visitor read the preceding block of text or not.
Readit News
On that note, I don't see any issue whatsoever with 82 people running for presidency - why not more? "Politics are too serious a matter to be left to politicians" -Charles de Gaulle
I wouldn't have an issue if the election used ranked choice voting.
Otherwise, however, it could be a disaster, with the winning candidate only having a tiny percentage of the vote.
Edit to add: I'm not sure if you added the "or pages" later or if I just missed it when replying, but my response was specifically about the suggestion that they should be separate systems. Separate pages totally makes sense, and I do think that's a good solution.
Here in New Zealand there is a military transport option but it's always breaking down and, by all accounts, nowhere near as comfortable as a commercial carrier.
Think about von der Leyen flying commercial :)
Of course, they won't read it before they design something that requires deep engagement through reading.
2. In fact, users can’t read anything, and if they could, they wouldn’t want to.”
— <https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/26/designing-for-peop...>
So for most stuff the manual goes straight to the shelf. Unless it is something particularly powerful or complex, I see having to refer to the manual as a failure in UX design.
So yeah, I don't want to refer to the manual.
That said, https://readabilityformulas.com/readability-scoring-system.p... is a good sanity check. Over half of people can't read text above a grade 8 readability. Worse yet, we aren't conscious of the effort that reading takes. Not until we are struggling. So competent people have little sense of the barriers they create.
I remember there was a terrible UX error a while back in Hawaii wasn't there?
And the "butterfly ballot" issue in the 2000 election is another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
Here's an example: Disappearing affordances. For some reason, the button to remove the background from Google Meet went from being its own "Remove Background" button, to all background thumbnails becoming a toggle button.
This is fine, so long as the selected background is visible. But if it's not, perhaps because the selected background is outside the viewport of the scrollable selector, then what's happened, is that the affordance of the "Remove Background" button simply disappeared.
For example: I am a Dutch citizen. Due to the European Union I have the right to live and work in Iceland. If I were to move there, I'd gain the right to vote in local elections (not national ones, gotta be a citizen for that) - without speaking a word of Icelandic. I'd also have to do taxes, renew my driver's license, and all the other government stuff.
Either I and the thousands like me are going to use Google Translate and screw it up, or they'll just have one of the many bilingual workers provide an official translation. It makes a lot of sense to just translate all official government pages, making an exception for this specific page is probably more work than just translating it too.
I’d also assume Google Translate will do better translating from English to $OtherLanguage than Icelandic to $OtherLanguage. So makes sense to put up a translation into English (or other common language) and make sure it’s correct.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Iceland [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language
However, it does have an "EN" button near the top right. Personally, I think this is as close to a perfect solution as you can get. (Geolocating an IP or something has a whole bunch of problems than just going with your country's official language as a default.)
Deleted Comment
Similarly, English is a standard language in India in part because of the linguistic diversity of the country¹ and being an outsider language means that communications in English don’t privilege any of the indigenous ethnic groups, although it seems that English usage has been dropping in favor of English.
⸻
1. English usage was supposed to have been phased out fifteen years after independence, but the mandated sunset was changed by constitutional amendment in 1963 (apparently a year after the sunset date(!)). India has 22 scheduled languages—i.e., languages receiving constitutional recognition and encouragement—but there are 122 major languages with more than 10,000 speakers. I think India wins the prize for the greatest linguistic diversity among the nations of the world.
Jeg snakker norsk, men det er alikevel vanskelig å forstå islandsk!
That seems unnecessarily verbose, and still slightly ambiguous. How about "Endorse a Candidate" and "Become a Candidate"?
"Register to collect endorsements" does not explicitly say whose endorsements. It is possible to read this sentence as a (slightly odd) way to say "Register to have your endorsements collected".
"Collect" is a rather ambiguous verb, if I saw a button on a different website saying "register to collect favorites", I would understand that the website is building the collection, from my clicking on items... not that others will fav my profile.
"Register as a candidate to collect endorsements" would have been much clearer, whether the visitor read the preceding block of text or not.
https://island.is/en/presidential-election-candidates