How Design Thinking Could Have Saved the Iowa Caucus

The first primary of the 2020 presidential election took place on Monday night, and it did not go well, to put it politely. The first results were not released until Tuesday night, and as of this writing on Wednesday evening, a winner has not been declared and campaigns are still awaiting final numbers.

This isn’t the first time Iowa Caucuses have been criticized — in both 2012 and 2016, results were delayed, and once they were released, they were controversial.

This year, leaders in Iowa wanted to solve these past issues around results delivery and they quickly identified a solution — technology. Sound familiar? In this era where “digital transformation” is everywhere, it is common to see people jumping to apps or other technologies to solve their problems.

But, as we’ve seen, the problem was not solved. In fact, it seems to have gotten worse. What could have solved this issue? The Iowa Democratic Committee should have approached this year’s caucus from a design thinking mindset. If they had, many of the problems they have experienced in this year’s caucus could have been mitigated.

When you utilize a design thinking mindset, you develop solutions to problems by involving the human perspective. In short, you start with the needs of those you serve, working in iteration and cycles, not in a linear and rigid manner. The results are then customer-focused, not business-benefit focused.

In this case, the “customers” were the precinct captains located in cities, towns large and small across Iowa. Using a design thinking mindset, this process could have started by building empathy for these captains. This could have taken the form of interviews with a small representative group of captains to understand their needs and constraints around technology and the caucus process.

Based on what we know now, it’s easy to predict what insights they would have gleaned from the interviews: many precinct captains were uncomfortable with smartphone technology, and, further, many didn’t even own smartphones! Armed with this information, the design process could have pivoted to better meet the captains’ needs. For example, they could have eliminated the idea of an app from their solution set and moved towards a solution that would meet the needs of all of the precinct captains they serve.

Another key part of a design thinking approach is iteration. Throughout the process, you are testing with customers, taking those learnings and refining the product, and repeating. A lot. Until you get it right. Based on the reported issues with downloading, logging into and using the app — not to mention the coding issue that the Iowa Democratic party identified as the main culprit in the results reporting — it is readily apparent that very little iteration took place during the app design process.

The lesson here? While digital transformation will be a key initiative for almost every organization in the foreseeable future — it is important to not jump straight to solutions. You must always start with the needs of your users and customers. Design thinking provides the framework to do just that.