Students in a new University of Wisconsin–Madison civic design course are helping reimagine the experience of first-time voters, from start to finish, to feel more like a celebration.
Guided by Design Studies Assistant Professor Esther Kang and in partnership with the Madison City Clerk’s Office, student teams in the Civic Design: Systems Thinking in Service Design course researched, prototyped and implemented design solutions to help ensure that first-time voters in Wisconsin feel informed, confident and eager to participate in elections.
“The underlying driver of the civic design class is to establish a foundation for a future generation of civic-minded creative thinkers from the Midwest,” Kang says. “The class exposes students to professional life in the public sector while providing them with the safety of a classroom.”
The project culminated in Nancy Nicholas Hall being transformed into an early voting site in March 2026. It will also be used as an early voting site in the August and November 2026 elections.
It all started when Bonnie Chang, the then-interim deputy clerk for the City of Madison (now senior elections expert at the Elections Group), reached out to the School of Human Ecology to propose a civic design project, part of growing national outreach to design departments at universities in the field of elections management. A voting site at Nancy Nicholas Hall made sense, as so many UW–Madison residence halls are nearby.
The field of civic design seeks to create accessible, effective and high-quality public services by considering the experiences of both the users and providers of the service, and by using systems thinking, which looks at systems as a whole when addressing problems. For instance, it can be used to improve the experience of people seeking to renew licenses at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or of citizens who’ve been called for jury duty.
Civic design can use both traditional information sources like pamphlets and digital media, but it also includes things like the redesign of a room layout to improve flow, or outlining new protocols for operations to address a recurring “pain point” that users and providers experience in an existing service.
Students in the civic design class followed the theme of “Celebrate Your Vote” for the project, conceptualized by Interior Architecture student Camila Victoria Vigdal Crespo. The students outlined the key touchpoints in the navigation of the first floor, from entering the building and making sense of direction.
With the goal of having first-time voters continue to participate in future elections, students accounted for the psychological dimension of each design by considering environmental factors that shape individual experiences, such as unexpected snowstorms, trip hazards and intentional use of nonpartisan or party-affiliated language.
Their design concept addressed the central question posed to the class: How can students who can vote make an informed, personal decision? From information hubs at building entrances to zines that outline ways to get involved, students in the course incorporated insights from a dozen partners, including the city clerk’s office and BadgersVote Coalition.
“Throughout this semester, I learned that feedback is essential in the design process,” says Kayla Johnson, a pre-Interior Architecture major. “It is natural to feel frustrated; however, detaching myself from the work allowed me to remember that feedback’s only function is to better the final product.”
Johnson says she liked the practice-based nature of the class, as its work was displayed across campus and applied to the voting site.
“It provided an opportunity to feel like my work was making a difference in my community and not simply restricted to the walls of my classroom, stuck as a mere prototype.” — Kayla Johnson
Abigail Tuinstra, an Interior Architecture student, underscores that “engaging in a practice-based class alongside a community partner was a completely different experience for me compared to my previous courses.” Tuinstra says she found the iterative process to be “invaluable in refining and finalizing the project that emerged from … class work.”
Chang says she was impressed with how the students translated complex election processes into intuitive, approachable experiences for voters. “They brought a fresh, human-centered lens to voting, focusing on how the process is to navigate, not just how it functions,” she says.
“The level of care and intention in their work stood out. They weren’t just designing for aesthetics — they were designing for clarity, accessibility and trust, which are foundational to election administration.” — Bonnie Chang
The city clerk’s office has come away with tangible ideas to use in the future, especially around signage, site flow and how it communicates with voters in real time, Chang says.
The hands-on voting project aims to introduce the principles of civic design to undergraduate and graduate students, and to the School of Human Ecology, Kang says. It’s UW–Madison’s first civic design class offered in partnership with a government agency, and the school hopes to continue to offer it in the future, possibly focusing on different government services.
It marks a growing focus within the Design, Innovation & Society (DIS) major on design for the public good.
The creation of the course spanned six months leading up to the first day of class. The semester preceding the course consisted of conducting preliminary research on campus voter outreach and engagement co-led by Kang and DIS student Smeera Zaveri.
Through structured workshops called “design sprints” and feedback sessions with key partners, the course aimed to immerse students in the world of a civic designer, navigating the lifespan of a single project while having access to mentorship from an instructor.
“The goal is to give them a taste of practitioner life in the public sector, unique insight into a designer’s experience in civic engagement and a safe environment for experimentation,” Kang says.
In conjunction with collaborative workshops with the city clerk’s office, Kang established a “brain trust” of professionals and academics in civic design to give students access to a global network, from London to New York City, in addition to Kang’s 10 years of experience working in the public sector as a civic designer and researcher.
“Students engaged with members of the brain trust to get industry-level feedback so that they meet key milestones in the class and in the scope of work,” Kang says. “Students benefited from gaining hands-on understanding of what practitioners in the field consider, how they frame problems, ways that they manage risk and how they might measure impact.”
Story by Mike Klein and photos by Sharon Vanorny.