Do you work in government?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sarah Weise on June 28, 2011 at 4:37pm

1. Pressing UX need for Federal Government: Removing organization-focused items on websites and simplifying homepages to just display target users' top tasks

2. N/A (I'm a consultant)

3. The one thing that's holding back government agencies from achieving UX goals: Super-user stakeholders.  Government websites need to put more focus on the needs of their target audiences, rather than a few loud stakeholders.

4. The one thing about UX that you want your client to understand: Just because you hear complaints from super users a lot does not make them the largest audience and should not make them the most influential audience.

 

5. What UX topic would you like to hear more of HFI’s perspective on?  Designing for non-eCommerce sites

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Horvath on June 29, 2011 at 2:43pm

Sarah, hopefully the paper that Guy referenced (a draft) will help with #5.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on it :-)

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Permalink Reply by Shandon Bissell on June 28, 2011 at 5:00pm

1. What is the most pressing UX need that the Federal Government has for this coming year - N\A, I work with small local governments.

2. What is the most pressing UX need your organization has for this coming year - We make financial software and right now, with our latest web based applications, the ease of large data entry without touching the mouse and more keyboard shortcuts are needed.

3. What is the one thing that is holding government agencies back from achieving their UX goals? - Seasoned users reluctant to change.

4. What is the one thing about UX that you want your boss to understand? - Sometimes we are stuck with a UX problem because of the tools we chose to use to build our applications. We built the applications fast but with a cost of design flexibility.

5. What UX topic would you like to hear more of HFI’s perspective on? More with Software Applications, Less with Websites.

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Permalink Reply by Guy Harvey on June 29, 2011 at 6:12pm

Many thanks Shandon. Please send me an email to guy.harvey@humanfactors.com with the subject white paper and I will forward it to you. 

Guy

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Permalink Reply by Justin Stockton on June 28, 2011 at 9:31pm

1. What is the most pressing UX need that the Federal Government has for this coming year

Getting citizens to content. Whether that's from a home page or from search results often times the content is either buried deep within a site or on pages that contain content written in governmentese.

 

2. What is the most pressing UX need your organization has for this coming year

Innovating while maintaining accessibility.

 

3. What is the one thing that is holding government agencies back from achieving their UX goals?

Stakeholders interested more in politics than the needs of the users. Rarely in my experience are the stakeholders identified as actual users of a website or application.

 

4. What is the one thing about UX that you want your boss to understand?

That a better understanding of what people need will give better results than pleasing the "stakeholders" 

 

5. What UX topic would you like to hear more of HFI’s perspective on?

Web applications rather than web sites. Also more on search, specifically pagination in search and if research shows how users navigate beyond page one.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Horvath on June 29, 2011 at 2:48pm

Justin, one key thing regarding #3 - I've always found it very important to be able to map UX goals to business/political goals.  If you can't explain why a particular UX project or task is supporting some larger organization-wide strategy or goal, you'll always have a hard time justifying it.  If, on the other hand, you can say, "Hey, if we do this, it will help with Strategic Goal #3 and we might expect to benefit this way and that way and that way."

 

Also, to your point #5 (and Shandon raised it above), HFI does a ton of work in this space, though it doesn't always come across in our public conversations.  That's largely because public web sites are easier to talk about in public.  Software apps (and web apps, etc.) tend to be internal or proprietary, so we are more limited in what we can talk about in terms of specifics.  But, I do hear you that you'd like to hear more about these issues play out with apps rather than sites.

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Permalink Reply by Guy Harvey on June 29, 2011 at 6:16pm

Thanks for responding Justin.

Please send me an email to guy.harvey@humanfactors.com with subject white paper and I will forward it to you. 

Guy

 

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Permalink Reply by Dhirendra Krishna on June 29, 2011 at 12:06am

1. What is the most pressing UX need that the Federal Government has for this coming year

 

In Indian context, emergent need is  change of mindset of Government officials at all levels, who are required to work as service provider, to meet the needs of citizens interacting with them. Changes in web site should reflect this fundamental re-orientation in attitudes. Web sites should also provide information needed by citizens, to hold public authorities accountable.

2. What is the most pressing UX need your organization has for this coming year.

 

Usability survey, to ascertain whether web sites serve the intended purpose and what needs to be done to improve them.

 

3. What is the one thing that is holding government agencies back from achieving their UX goals?

 

Key lies in change of attitude. Public administration does not change without external pressures; political compulsion arising from demand from citizens.

 

 

4. What is the one thing about UX that you want your boss to understand?

 

Unless the advantages of transparency and service orientation are understood in an organisation, improvements are likely to be superficial, without touching core issues. There is need for clarity in objective of reforms and changes in public disclosure of information through web site.

5. What UX topic would you like to hear more of HFI’s perspective on?

• Usability studies
• Web sites for disclosure and dissemination of information under section 4 of Right To Information Act 2005 in India, and identical legal provisions in Freedom of Information Law in UK.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Horvath on June 29, 2011 at 2:52pm

Dhihendra, something that we use here in the US to measure the overall "customer satisfaction" of citizens with respect to government agencies and, more specifically, with their web sites, is the ACSI score.  American Customer Satisfaction Survey.  It's a nice way of getting a high-level measure of how well the organization is doing in meeting the needs of its citizens, and is a score that is pretty understandable to even high-level executives.  Do you know if anything like this exists in India?

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Permalink Reply by Guy Harvey on June 29, 2011 at 6:17pm

Many thanks Dhirendra. Please send me an email to guy.harvey@humanfactors.com with subject "white paper" and I will forward the paper on persuasion.

Guy

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Permalink Reply by Carlos on June 29, 2011 at 5:14am

1. What is the most pressing UX need that the Federal Government has for this coming year

Even though I live abroad, I am in charge of important online strategies of some important political parties. So in my situation the most pressing UX need is to reinforce the atributes of the main candidate.

2. What is the most pressing UX need your organization has for this coming year

To be the reference in UX through solid digital solutions.

3. What is the one thing that is holding government agencies back from achieving their UX goals?

Mainly because UX is something yet not very well known in this field and instead of thinking of the user, the political parties are showing off their best candidates without knowing what the users are really expecting.

4. What is the one thing about UX that you want your boss to understand?

Fortunately I work with a UX team and we all know the importance of it.

5. What UX topic would you like to hear more of HFI’s perspective on?

Success stories or case studies that could give us ideas to improve.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Barnett on June 29, 2011 at 7:29am

I work for a company that has a federal government contract, and therefore work on websites that must meet Section 508 accessibility requirements. Design practices to support accessibility and inclusive design are often not considered, and the responsibility for meeting these requirements is usually leveled at implementation teams. Since accessibility is ultimately assessed by the browser experience, the role of code is to support that experience. UX designers for government (federal and many state) agencies should understand the needs of users with disabilities, legal requirements and how to collaborate with developers to provide design solutions that make their work available and usable to all users. Many federal agencies make purchasing decisions based on the accessibility of the product over price.

 

I attended the full HFI training and received my C.U.A. Certification in 2009, and there was very little information about accessible web design or user testing with assistive technology. I would like to see the curriculum expanded to provide this training, especially for designers and usability specialists who do work for governmental agencies, or for companies with governmental contracts. When the legal landscape changes, which most people believe will happen within the next 2 years, all e-commerce websites may be required to make their web services accessible, so inclusive design practices will become standard in our field.

 

Finally, I hope that the video you are planning to make will include synchronized captioning, in accordance with the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (see Adobe's overview here: http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2010/10/president-obama-signs-...)

 

Thank you, and I am interested in helping to achieve what I'm requesting, so feel free to contact me if I can support accessible design efforts!

 

Lisa Barnett

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