ADDRESSING E-GOVERNMENT WEBSITE USABILITY - A Users’ Centred Evaluation

Zhao Huang, Laurence Brooks

2011

Abstract

The challenge of greater users’ participation with e-government remains a significant issue. E-government website usability has been found to be one of the major reasons influencing users’ interaction, which needs to be addressed when developing e-government. This empirical study evaluates a current e-government website, to identify specific usability problems. Based on the identified problems, the design solutions are proposed, redesigned and evaluated in order to develop a more usable e-government website. The results indicate that with the proposed design solutions provision, the identified usability problems have been addressed. Such improvements may promote overall usability of e-government and make better users’ task performance. These are beneficial for designers to further develop their e-government usability.

References

  1. Amoako-Gyampah, K., 2007. Perceived usefulness, user involvement and behavioural intention: an empirical study of ERP implementation, Computer in Human Behavior, 23, 1232-1248.
  2. Anthopoulos, L. G., Siozos, P., Tsoukalas, I. A. 2006. Applying participatory design and collaboration in digital public services for discovering and re-designing e-government services, Government Information Quarterly, 24(2), 353-376.
  3. Barker, D. L. 2009. Advancing e-government performance in the United States through enhanced usability benchmarks, Government Information Quarterly, 26, 82-88.
  4. Barnes, S. J., Vidgen, R., 2004. Interactive e-government services: modelling user perceptions with eQual, Electronic Government, 1(2), 213-228.
  5. Brinck, T., Gergle, D., Wood, S. D. 2002. Usability for the web: designing web site that work, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, CA.
  6. Brown, M. M. 2003. Digital government innovation, School of Government, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Retrieved from http://ncinfo.iog.unc.edu/pubs/electronicversions/pdfs/ dgib0301.pdf.
  7. Casaló, L., Flavián, C., Guinalíu, M. 2008. The role of perceived usability, reputation, satisfaction and consumer familiarity on the website loyalty formation process, Computers in Human Behavior, 24(2), 325- 345.
  8. Delice, E., Güngör, Z., 2009. The usability analysis with heuristic evaluation and analytic hierarchy process, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 39(6), 934-939.
  9. Donker-Kuijer, M. W., Jong, M., Lentz, L. 2010. Usable guidelines for usable websites? an analysis of five egovernment heuristics, Government Information Quarterly, 27, 254-263.
  10. Dumas, J. S., Redish, J. C., 1999. A practical Guide to usability testing, Intellect Ltd, USA.
  11. Flavián, C., Guinaliu, M., Gurrea, R. 2006. The role played by perceived usability, satisfaction and consumer trust on website loyalty, Information and Management, 43, 1-14.
  12. Følstad, A., Jørgensen, H. D., Krogstie, J., 2004. User involvement in e-government development projects, Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 82, 217 - 224.
  13. Garcia, A. C. B., Maciel, C., Pinto, F. B. 2005. A quality inspection method to evaluate e-government sites, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3591, 198-209.
  14. Gillan, D. J., Bias, R. G. 2001 usability science I: foundations, International Journal of Human Computer Interaction, 13(4), 351-372.
  15. Henriksson, A., Yi, Y., Frost, B., Middleton, M., 2007. Evaluation instrument for e-government websites, International Journal of Electronic Government, 4(2), 204-226.
  16. Holden, S. H., Norris, D. F., Fletcher, P. D. 2003. Electronic government at the local level: progress to date and future issue, Public Performance and Management Review, 26(4), 325-344.
  17. Hvannberg, E. T., Law, E. L., Larusdottir, M. K., 2007. Heuristic evaluation: comparing ways of finding and reporting usability problems, Interacting with Computers, 19(2), 225-240.
  18. ISO 9241-11, 1998. Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals part II: guidance on usability, International Organization for Standardization.
  19. Jaeger, P. T. 2003. The endless wire: e-government as global phenomenon, Government Information Quarterly, 20(4), 323-331.
  20. Karahoca, A., Bayraktar, E., Tatoglu, E., Karahoca, D. 2010. Information system design for a hospital emergency department: a usability analysis of software prototypes, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 43, 224-232.
  21. Kappel, G., Pröll, B., Reich, S., Retschitzegger, W. 2006. Web engineering, the discipline of systematic development of web applications, John Wiley & Sons.
  22. Kossak, F., Essmayr, W., Winiwarter, W., 2001. Applicability of HCI research to e-government, 9th European Conference on Information Systems, 957- 968.
  23. Larson, K., Czerwinski, M. 1998. Web page design: implications of memory, structure and scent for information retrieval, Proceedings of CHI' 98 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 25-32.
  24. Layne, K., Lee, J. 2001. Developing fully functional egovernment: a four stage model, Government Information Quarterly, 18, 126-136.
  25. Lee, S., Koubek, R. J., 2010. The effects of usability and web design attributes on user preference for ecommerce web sites, Computers in Industry, In Press, Corrected Proof.
  26. Muir, A., Oppenheim, C. 2002. National Information policy developments worldwide in electronic government, Journal of Information Science, 28(3), 173-186.
  27. Nielsen, J., Molich, R., 1990. Heuristic evaluation of user interface, Proceedings of the ACM CHI'92, 249-256.
  28. Nielsen, J., 1994. Heuristic evaluation: usability inspection methods, New York.
  29. Nielsen, J. 2000. Deigning web usability: the practice of simplicity, New Riders Publishing, Indiana, USA.
  30. OECD 2003. OECD E-Government Studies: the egovernment imperative, OECD, Paris.
  31. Reddick, C. G., 2005. Citizen interaction with egovernment: From the streets to servers?, Government Information Quarterly, 22(1), 38-57.
  32. Reddick, C. G. 2009. The adoption of centralized customer service systems: a survey of local governments, Government Information Quarterly, 26(1), 219-226.
  33. Sauer, J., Sonderegger, A. 2009. The influence of prototype fidelity and aesthetics of design in usability tests: effects on users behaviour, subjective evaluation and emotion, Applied Ergonomics, 40, 670-677.
  34. Shareef, M. A., Kumar, V., Kumar, U., Dwivedi, Y. K. 2011. E-government adoption model (GAM): differing service maturity levels, Government Information Quarterly, 28, 17-35.
  35. Sonderegger, A., Sauer, J., 2010. The influence of design aesthetics in usability testing: effects on user performance and perceived usability, Applied Ergonomics, 41, 403-410.
  36. Steyaert, J. C., 2004. Measuring the performance of electronic government services, Information and Management, 41(3), 369-375.
  37. Tolbert, C., Mossberger, K., 2003. The effects of egovernment on trust and confidence in government, Proceedings of the 2003 Annual National Conference on Digital Government Research, Digital Government Research Center, 1-7.
  38. Virzi, R., 1992. Refining the test phase of usability evaluation: how many subjects is enough? Human factors, 24, 457-468.
  39. Wang, L., Bretschneider, S., Gant, J., 2005 Evaluating web-based e-government services with a citizencentric approach, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 5, 129-139.
  40. Yang, J. Q., Paul, S., 2005. e-Government application at local level: issues and challenges: an empirical study, International Journal of Electronic Government, 2(1), 56-76.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Huang Z. and Brooks L. (2011). ADDRESSING E-GOVERNMENT WEBSITE USABILITY - A Users’ Centred Evaluation . In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST, ISBN 978-989-8425-51-5, pages 173-183. DOI: 10.5220/0003272201730183


in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist11,
author={Zhao Huang and Laurence Brooks},
title={ADDRESSING E-GOVERNMENT WEBSITE USABILITY - A Users’ Centred Evaluation},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,},
year={2011},
pages={173-183},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0003272201730183},
isbn={978-989-8425-51-5},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,
TI - ADDRESSING E-GOVERNMENT WEBSITE USABILITY - A Users’ Centred Evaluation
SN - 978-989-8425-51-5
AU - Huang Z.
AU - Brooks L.
PY - 2011
SP - 173
EP - 183
DO - 10.5220/0003272201730183