Public perceptions and user experience study on the use and adoption of a mobile internet e-Voting smartphone app within the Australian context

Abstract

The Doctor of Philosophy (Innovation) (PhD.I) is a project-based higher research degree in which professional and industrial expertise combine with academic theory in the identification and creation of innovation. This innovation portfolio project is the culmination of a five-year journey on the first Australian university study on public perceptions and user experiences of using mobile internet e- Voting in the Australian context. This innovation portfolio project has produced baseline data on the perceptions of the Australian public, a prototype mobile voting smartphone app (the innovation), which allows for secure registration, casting a vote in a federal election and submitting a response to a national survey, and a user experience study on the app and A/B tests of various features. <br/> Trust is a core foundation of user adoption and, as such, is the underlying theme of the portfolio. Guided by the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis, 1989), data collected from an anonymous survey on perceptions of the Australian public towards using a mobile internet e-Voting platform (N = 295) are presented and analysed. Of the respondents, 72.88% either Completely Trusted or Slightly Trusted government and commercial systems as opposed to 15.93% who either Completely Distrusted or Slightly Distrusted government and commercial systems. The survey also found that 75.25% of respondents were in favour of using mobile internet e-Voting, with 15.93% of respondents requiring greater information about the technology and 8.82% being against its utilisation. The top appeals of the platform were its mobility (91.40%), verifiability (72.90%) and Innovation Portfolio Project speed (72.50%), with the top concerns being manipulation (75.10%), retrieval (65.30%) and monitoring (63.20%) of cast votes by malicious parties or software.

This portfolio also provides a chronologically documented development journey of the “mobile voting app” project. Utilising the Scrum methodology, this portfolio documents the beginning of the development project (envisioning session), the product backlog construction, sprint cycles, retrospectives and features details. Next, the mobile voting app is user tested by way of qualitative in-depth interviews to gather perceptions of five participants from a young and tech savvy cohort who are likely to be early adopters (Rogers, 2010). This user experience study found that participants were pleased with the usefulness and simplicity of the app. Most participants stated that they would use the mobile voting app if it were made available in the next election. These findings correlate with the constructs of the TAM (Davis, 1989), which state that perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) directly influence a user's attitude towards new technology (A). Those who would not use the app in the next election were either those who had not voted in an Australian election previously and stated they would like to vote using paper ballots first then would use it in the following election or were those who has reservations about the technology and its usefulness, primarily around government support. These findings correlate with the unified theory of acceptance and the use of technology model (UTAUT) by Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis (2003), which states that the degree to which an individual believes that an organisational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system (facilitating conditions), directly influences the use behaviour and the moderating variable of experience.

This portfolio concludes with a personal reflection on the findings and process of the works undertaken, the anticipations for this research and potential pathways for further development and application. Commentary is also provided on public events that occurred during the time of the research that widely impacted on public perceptions of the technology, including the 2016 census debacle, the 2015 NSW iVote hacking report and the Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections.