Last weekend everyone was talking about Iowa. I usually wouldn’t bother covering the controversy here if not for two things. First of all, even though I currently live in Sopot, Poland, Iowa is a significant part of my life. Back in 1999, I finished high-school in Marion, IA (with not the best grades, lol), and that was a life-changing time for me. A nerdy web-designer/developer, out in Iowa, trying to fit in (and mostly failing).

So I do feel connected to Iowa as it’s a part of who I am.

When I saw some leaked images from that infamous app, I realized that it’s yet another example of something I’ve been talking about A LOT.

Bad UI often means a bad product.

While the UX crowd wasn’t too pleased by my approach before, I still stand by it. There are edge cases in which a professional team of developers built a sophisticated app for pros. It can be poorly done on the front-end side and still do its job well.

But in most cases UI is that one area of UX that is a dead giveaway of overall quality. You can’t really judge information architecture, flows, or successful, applied research in a product without knowing all about it.

A lousy UI we can see and recognize right away.

It’s even more apparent with the Iowa app because it’s supposedly an official product. I know the political divide is quite big nowadays. Still, as both parties are primarily American, maybe they could … you know — use the US Web Design System in their official products?

USWDS 2.0

It was created for a reason (and is quite good, actually). Sure — it’s for the “web,” but an app like that isn’t that complex that it couldn’t have been recreated using it.

What happened to “judge a book by its cover”?

Even if the people in charge of the Iowa Caucus are not “tech-savvy,” they probably use other, more refined apps daily. Don’t they see the difference? Really? Can you spot a rusted-over old Toyota next to a brand new Tesla and still say:

They’re both equally good.

Some of the younger employees maybe even worked on some digital products (or around them) before. I can’t imagine the entire UX / UI / CX process being outsourced by a major political force to an IT firm without anyone to question the result.

So why was a product that looks like a functional demo even chosen?

We’ll probably never know (or don’t want to know).

I’ll try to go over what little screenshots of the app appeared and briefly annotate them. Lots of those problems are universal and are an easy way to judge a product. Sure — you can be wrong — but you likely won’t be.

Let’s check it out, shall we?