Great Govt Portals Simon Herd

Creating Great Government PortalsMarch 15 2010

Simon Herd

Partner of

2Can we really learn from each other?

Countries are different– Language– Culture– Structure/coverage of government

▶ e.g. national v state v local, variable roles in health and state industries

– Resources available and level of technology maturity But we’re going in similar directions

– Global move towards E-Government and focus on creating government portals and e-services

▶ Citizen expectations of E-Gov’t are increasing

▶ See UN E-Government Survey 2010 – out soon

– We’re all people, some basic precepts of psychology and interaction with technology persist

Today we’ll look at 10 areas which we do see making a difference out there

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1. Understand who the portal is for

41. Understanding who the portal is for

51. Understand who the portal is for

It’s a government website, it needs to be for everyone

But designing for everyone invariably ends up as design for yourself– Develop personas for the most important audience helps focus the

design and challenge team assumptions – Think about the purpose of the site and who is most likely to benefit

from it▶ Different government sites have different focus

– Be careful about overestimating the place of the website in their lives and making assumptions about return visits

Focus on what they need from the portal – There can be a temptation to publish the content available have

rather than what people want, making it harder to find what is useful

– It also shouldn’t be technology-led ▶ “Lets do an iPhone app”

– Develop realistic scenarios and remember, new users are highly likely!

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2. Exercise effective control over the home page

72. Exercise effective control over the home page

82. Exercise effective control over the home page Provide users with a clear sense of what is

available within the portal– They won’t know if you don’t tell them

There is high demand for space on portal home pages– Be careful of the latest project taking priority

over fundamental needs– Somebody with a view of overall strategy must

control what is displayed Surface important/recurring content that

needs to be found quickly– Just focusing on logical structure isn’t helpful– Work out the most popular content from web

stats– Provide rapid access to these in a high-level Do

it online section

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3. Design the Information Architecture around user needs

103. Design the IA around user needs

113 Design IA around user needs

Focus on what users want not government structure– Users often don’t understand which parts of

government are responsible for their area of interest▶ Government structure also evolves over time

– Life-events are widely used, but don’t do it all▶ Some needs are ongoing, so don’t fit in set piece

events e.g. paying tax

▶ A multi-faceted approach can help e.g. Life event within topic

Involve users in the IA definition– Card sorting is useful to identify an understandable

structure and labels▶ But it can be difficult to conduct with large structures

and results need careful handling

▶ Alternative – Use a good Information Architect to create it and validate it with users

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4. Get a good search

134. Get a good search

144. Get a good search

Spend time designing a good search feature– Government sites are potentially more

diverse and involve deeper structures– Search should feature prominently

throughout the portal– It should behave like the most commonly

used web search engines– Search results should provide enough

contextual information about the destination content

▶ Especially where other government sites are linked to

– Indicate the type of content found ▶ e.g. guide, summary, online process

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5. Keep users well orientated

165. Keep users well orientated

175. Keep users well orientated

Most users are likely to come to a site via a web search not the home page– Engage in search engine optimisation– Provide good orientation at lower-levels of the site

Ensure the Information Architecture/navigation structure can accommodate growth– Allow additional layers of navigation to be

supported and signpost lower-level content– Links are not enough, sub headings and supporting

text are useful – Keep the structure under review

Keep users orientated when moving between portal and related sites– Link to the optimum page and provide a thread of

continuity between sites

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6. Be authoritative

196. Be authoritative

It needs to look like a government websites– Use a relevant portal name

▶ UKOnline became DirectGov

– If they don’t know where content is from, they suspect motives

– Logos are really really important, people don’t read, but often recognise logos

Users need to trust government websites – They expect it to be the ultimate authority

and may be making big decisions based on what they see

– Out of date content undermines user opinions of the site and adds to website noise

– Purge what is redundant

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7. Content style matters

217. Content style matters

227. Content style matters

Design content for scanning– Users don’t read word-for word and tend to

overlook large blocks of text– Use short paragraphs, white space, sub

headings and a concise style to aid scanning – Use white space to draw the eye to

important content– Use consistent page templates so users

know where to look when they access a page

Be careful of jargon– It isn’t always understood by a wider

audience– Abbreviations can be helpful, but they

shouldn’t be relied on▶ They don’t know what they mean or

assume another meaning

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8. You can look modern

248. You can look modern

258. You can look modern

Users don’t come to government websites for entertainment– For most government content, design

needs to be clear and focused on the information rather than being graphically-led

But they value a modern approach which has higher design principles– Opinions of quality are driven by all sites

they visit, so it must look professional to be credible

– More graphically-led content may be appropriate for particular circumstances

▶ e.g. online training or tourism

– We are detecting a subtle shift towards more desire for engagement

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9. Make sure users know you exist

279. Make sure users know you exist

E-Government can be a wonderful thing, but people need to know about it– Investment in a new e-service is wasted

if people don’t know– Signpost it from existing websites – Make potential users aware via

alternative channels e.g. Posters in Driving Centres for content aimed at driving instructors

– Remember, an e-service may be threatening somebody’s job or way of working

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10. Get effective user experience input to you project

2910. Get effective UX input to your project Have one person take major decisions on portal user

experience– Individual projects can also loose sight of the bigger picture

▶ Diverse stakeholders involved in decision making

▶ Overall user experience may not be their priority

User input helps decision making at key stages– Gov’t projects can have many diverse stakeholders

▶ All with a particular focus, expertise and perception of constraint in a project

▶ It’s easy to argue with each other, but seeing the same user input gives a common focus, understanding of priorities and issues, making it easier to get things done

Make sure stakeholders are fully signed up– They will have useful contributions– If they don’t like the results and they are not signed up to it,

they may look for methodology weakness

30Summary

1 Understand who the portal is for

2 Exercise effective control over the home page

3 Design the IA around user needs

4 Get a good search

5 Keep users well orientated

6 Be authoritative

7 Content style matters

8 You can look modern

9 Make sure your users know you exist

10 Get effective UX input to your project

31Sites to look at

– www.usability.gov – US government website to guidance on developing usable and useful government websites

– Personas – Alan Cooper http://www.cooper.com/, snitker http://www.snitker.com/default.asp?id={43228245-BE33-46AE-B9F1-4E2C61BBD779}

– Critique of Directgov (UK) - http://directgov.consumerfocuslabs.org

– UN E-Government Survey (2010 survey out soon) http://www.unpan.org/egovernment.asp

– UK Central Office of Information Usability Toolkit - http://usability.coi.gov.uk/

32Contact details

Simon Herd

Managing Consultant

ExperienceLab

+44 (0)20 7421 6491

[email protected]

Thank you