After seeing people leave polling places in Florida on Election Day during the presidential election in 2000 who said they weren’t sure they voted for the person they wanted to vote for, Dana was inspired to learn more about how elections worked.
She was fortunate to work with amazing research partners and to connect with brilliant election professionals all over the United States to design and build products that would help ensure that voters can vote the way they intend, and that their votes are counted as cast.
Below is a chronological list of Dana’s research and deliverables related to voting and elections.
| Year | Topic | Description |
| 2006 | Kit for testing usability of ballots | With others, develop a kit for local election officials to do their own usability testing |
| 2008 | Language of instructions on ballots | With Ginny Redish, et al, studied effect of plain language in instructions on ballots |
| 2009 | Style guide for voting system documentation | With Susan Becker, developed a set of style guidelines and checklists directed to voting system makers |
| 2010 | First usability test of RCV | Field testing of different formats of ranked choice voting |
| 2012 | Field Guides To Ensuring Voter Intent | First 4 Field Guides To Ensuring Voter Intent published |
| 2012 | County election websites | With Cyd Harrell, et al, cataloged county sites, researched voters’ questions |
| 2013 | Voter guide research | With Whitney Quesenbery, field research on information needs of low propensity voters |
| 2013 | Poll workers and election security | With Whitney Quesenbery, studied practices and attitudes of poll workers and election integrity |
| 2013 | Anywhere Ballot | With Kathryn Summers and Drew Davies, developed and tested first prototype of first standards compliant, accessible digital user interface available through a web browser, now the basis of all commercially available digital ballot designs |
| 2017 | Voter Journey | With Maggie Ollove, tying together findings from studies, visualized the voter experience |
| 2018 | Information ecosystem | With Christopher Patten, studied where voters get information and what questions they ask about voting and elections |
| 2019 | New citizens & civic engagement | With Christopher Patten, studied barriers to voting for voters with low English and low civics literacy |
| 2019 | State election websites | With Christopher Patten, repeated 2012 study on county websites, this time on state websites for voters |