How To Create Government Websites That Don’t #FAIL
Kathy E. Gill, University of WashingtonDustin Hodge, UX DesignerGordon Ross, OpenRoad
1. Be Useful2. Be Usable
3. Be Accessible4. Be Attractive
5. Be Social6. Think
Mobile
The Internet Is Mainstream
• 82% of Americans online use government websites
• 48% have looked online for information about a local, state or federal public policy or issue
• 46% have checked out the services a government agency provides
Pew Internet & American Life Project, How Americans Use Government Websites, April 27, 2010
But They Can’t Always Get What They Want …
Successful Engagement Means…
• Cost Savings – 80% more likely to use website as primary interaction channel
• Word of Mouth “Advertising” – 79% more likely to recommend the site
Foresee Results, Making the Case for E-Gov, April 26, 2011
110 websites; 330,000 surveys
No #1 Citizen Priority For Improvement …
FunctionalityTransparency(a tie)
Benchmark Federal Gov’t Sites
• Social Security Administration, iClaim socialsecurity.gov/applyonline
• Social Security Administration, Estimator ssa.gov/estimator
• Social Security Administration, Prescription Drug Planssocialsecurity.gov/i1020
Panel:
• Case-Studies With Lessons Learned– Dustin : City of Seattle– Gordon : City of Vancouver BC– Notes appended to this deck
• Followed by Q&A• I’ll monitor backchannel: #ogw11
#web (this is not Sarah’s hashtag!)
A Word About Social …
…. It’s More Than Facebook
Don’t Make Us Create New Accounts To Access Info ….
But Don’t Limit Us ToFacebookConnect, Either!
And A Word About Mobile
Thank You!
• Kathy E. Gill, @kegill• Dustin Hodge, @zelbinian• Gordon Ross, @gordonr
Panel Presentation at OpenGovWestMay 13, 2011Portland, OR
Slide design influenced by NZ Company Optimal Usability
Notes From Gordon – Page 1
• Peter Morville – O’Reilly Book: Information Architecture– Usability Honeycomb
• Evolution of Web Design Patterns– Web 1.0 (design anti-pattern): website
organizations mirrors org chart– Next step: organization by type of
customer (who am I? who does the site think I am?)
– Task organization -> think verbs not nouns
Gordon - 2
• Richard Saul Wurman (how to classify information)– Location– Alphabet– Time– Category– Hierarchy
Gordon - 3
• Subject Matter Classification Experiment: chicken, cow, grass – which of the one of those three does not belong?– How many said chicken?– How many said cow?– How many said grass?
• There is no one true civic IA – hypothesize and test
Gordon - 4
• The City of Vancouver confused the “City” with the “city” – institution and governance versus geographic “plexis”
• Research into mental models of citizens of Vancouver
Dustin – Page 1
• Usability study for Seattle.gov• Myths:
– Everything needs to be above the fold– Everything needs to be found in three
clicks
• Steve Krug: – Don’t Make Me Think– Rocket Surgery Made Easy
Dustin - 2
• Hooked up with Deal-a-Day sites to give participants things like $25 for only $15 – targeted business users and citizens
• Instead of setting up fancy usability lab– Used cubicle in Seattle gov office + webcam– Conference room elsewhere, with managers
and IT people, watching– The power of real time observation (or video
later)– Led to ad hoc committee formation in the
room– Can be done in-house inexpensively
Group Questions
• When will Seattle implement the redesign?– Already done – some in stages
• Gordon -> when we do usability tests for gov’t sites we do a “findability” task … findability does not always = task success
• Kathy puts a plug in for metadata for documents
Group Questions - 2
• What happens when you start letting people categorize (tag) data?– Dustin -> there was a thought about
My.Seattle.Gov …
• Handhelds and the small screen– Gordon -> think context of use – how
are people using mobile devices in the world
