|
Background
Usability is a moving target. Just ask the State of California.
In 2001 California's new internet portal was an awardwinning
success (first place in the Center for Digital
Government's Best of the Web contest). However, the site
structure did not accommodate growth over the next five
years, nor were processes in place to keep information
current and harness new technologies. As a result,
California's eGovernment efforts fell to a ranking of 47th
out of 50 states in a 2005 assessment conducted by Brown
University.
State CIO Clark Kelso knew that California needed to
overhaul its portal and adopt a process for continuous
improvement to prevent future backslides.
The Challenge: a fragmented portal
California has the largest, most complex government of
any state: 79 departments and over 300 boards and commissions.
Historically, most of these agencies developed
and maintained their own Web sites, with little guidance or
oversight at the state level.
Under this fragmented approach, the state portal was not
aligned with how citizens actually look for information.
Rather, the site reflected the organizational structure of the
government itself, making it difficult for people to find what
they needed. For example, to establish a new business in
California citizens were forced to jump between twenty-four
different agency sites. There was no clear path for obtaining
necessary licensing – people didn't know where to begin.
"We are not in the entertainment business," says Andrew
Armani, Director of eServices office. "People interact with
government because they have to, kind of like going to the
dentist. We must create a simple, understandable environment
to let them do their business and get out. Automating
routine tasks online allows government to provide better
service and save costs simultaneously."
The Approach: citizen-centered design
Mr. Kelso's team formed a plan to guide the portal redesign
and implement measures for ongoing improvement. Their
vision is for a more "courteous, trustworthy, and responsive
eGovernment." While past initiatives focused on the Web's
convenience to government, a stronger emphasis is now
placed on meeting the needs of citizens and businesses.
Since usability is a key element of this transition, HFI was
brought in to assess the portal through a usability test,
expert review, and nearly fifty stakeholder interviews.
|
"Usability is grounded in empirical work
with real users, giving us a more objective
basis for decisions about Web design. This
helps our departments get out of their
'silos' and become more customer-centric.
Usability analysis helps us avoid biased designs based on
our own perspectives."
Clark Kelso
Chief Information Officer,
State of California |
|
"People interact with government because
they have to, kind of like going to the
dentist. We must create a simple, understandable
environment to let them do their
business and get out."
Andrew Armani
Director of eServices office,
State of California |
Next steps
HFI identified many strategic and design-related issues
and provided recommendations to address them. Several
of the most urgent problems were:
- Design standards were too inflexible to meet the needs
of different agencies
- Site navigation was hard to understand – people were
overwhelmed by too much information on main landing
pages (see graphic below)
- Visual design was not effective at guiding users
towards relevant content
- Spanish-speaking users were not adequately accommodated
Despite this variety of issues, the underlying challenge is
simple: government knows too much about itself to
design for ordinary citizens. Applying user-centered
design methods is the only systematic, reliable way to
overcome this dilemma.
"Usability is grounded in empirical work with real users,
giving us a more objective basis for decisions about Web
design," says Mr. Kelso. "This helps our departments get
out of their 'silos' and become more customer-centric.
When I look at our Web pages, I just don't see things the
same way as an ordinary user does. Usability analysis
helps us avoid biased designs based on our own perspectives.
We've begun to centralize important resources
to improve usability collaboration statewide."
Usability may be a moving target, but California is clearly
moving in the right direction.
|
