Think of government systems as confusing by design? Elizabeth Buie, a computer systems professional with over 35 years of experience working on government systems and websites, gives her insights on the role of usability and user experience in government systems. She discusses how applying these principles and techniques in the design of government systems can make government more effective and efficient, thereby making it more cost effective and less expensive to run. She describes how these approaches can enable government systems to give their users a satisfying and even — dare we hope? — pleasant experience, whether they are interacting with their government from the outside or working for it on the inside. In government systems, we are all stakeholders. These findings are covered in Usability in Government Systems: User Experience Design for Citizens and Public Servants, which Elizabeth co-edited with Dianne Murray. This book, the first one to address this subject, contains chapters written by more than 30 experts in the field. You can get the book from Amazon at http://is.gd/uxgov This presentation was given to the DC Web Women in the autumn of 2012.

1. We Are All Stakeholders
Usability in Government
Systems
User Experience Design
for Citizens
and Public Servants
Elizabeth Buie
Luminanze Consulting
@ebuie

2. Who Am I?
• I’ve specialized in UI/
usability/UX since the
Beginning of Time 1978
• I’ve worked on government
systems even longer 1975
• I’ve worked in a very large
firm, a very small firm, and a
solo practice (current)

3. Some Notes on Terminology
• “Usability” — effectiveness, efficiency, and
satisfaction (from ISO 9241)
• “User experience” (UX) — users’ subjective
experience surrounding their use of a product
• Good usability is (usually) necessary for a good
user experience, but they are not the same thing
• We can design FOR good user experience, but
we cannot (for the most part) design the
experience itself: “UX design” is a shorthand

4. We Are All Stakeholders

5. How many lives do govt. systems affect?
Can you think of anyone whose life is NOT
touched in some way by a government system?
– Their own govt.
• national
• state/regional/local
– Nearby
governments
– The US
Government
About 6.8 billion lives

6. The audiences of government systems
What do you think of when you hear this phrase?
“usability in government”
Agency websites?
Gov 2.0?
Voting?
It’s all of these, and more.

7. Two kinds of audiences
• Public: citizens and
others
– citizens
– non-citizen residents
– visitors and potential
visitors to the area
– hopeful immigrants
• Internal: public servants
– employees
– contractors
• At all levels: national, state/regional, local

8. Major goals of public-facing systems
• Provide information and services to the
broadest possible audience
• Conduct transactions with the public
– Optional
• e.g., find a library book and put it on hold
– Required (but doing them on line may be optional)
• e.g., pay taxes, renew vehicle registration
• Encourage citizen participation (Gov 2.0)
• Protect citizen privacy

9. Some major goals of internal systems
• Conduct the work of the government as
effectively and efficiently as possible
• Maintain national/regional/local security

10. Internal systems: some examples
• Defense systems
• Air traffic control, spacecraft control
– some of these are defense related
• Agency intranets
• Emergency response systems
• Management of critical infrastructures
• Legislative drafting (lawmaking)
• Internal social media applications (e.g., the US
Department of Transportation’s IdeaHub)

11. Public and internal share many concerns
• Content strategy
• Plain language
• Accessibility
• Mobile access
• Security
• Biometrics (fingerprints,
iris recognition, etc.)
• Cross-cultural issues
Photo by NIST

12. Usability and UX in the process
• Getting UX work into the contract
• Use of usability process standards
• User-centered requirements engineering
• User-centered software development
• Usability evaluation

13. biggest
Public-facing systems are not the problem
^
• Government often sees the public as customers
• A good experience motivates people to use the
site or system
of democracies
• Governments want to be responsive to their
^
citizens
I redesigned this interaction, yay.


14. Internal systems can be a bigger challenge
• Internal users are a captive audience*
• Using the system is part of their jobs*
• Systems can be very complex
*with some exceptions

15. Internal: Usability more sellable than UX
• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Satisfaction ?
– Not quite as easy
– Can be couched in terms of employee morale
and therefore productivity
– Less important than the other two, but a case
can be made
• But experience? Surely you jest.

16. What makes govt. projects different?
• Access to users in advance
– Once an RFP is issued, bidders
cannot talk to users
• Contract structure
– Usability and UX may not be
mentioned in the RFP
– Can be difficult to bid it if not
• Effect of national politics
– Priorities
– Direction
– Funding

17. What makes govt. projects special?
• Number and diversity of users
affected
• Potential to affect important
aspects of many people’s
lives
• Potential to help make
government itself more
effective and efficient
Dare I say “more satisfying”
too?

18. Challenges to UX in the govt. process
• Getting usability into the contract (or the RFP, if
you’re on that side of the project)
• Working it into the project if it’s not in the RFP
• Getting awesome UXers
– Being seen as sexy *
– Paying as well as commercial
*I do have to confess, though,
that NASA, ESA, and the
International Space Station are
pretty dadgum sexy projects.

19. Flexibility is essential
• Do what’s called for in each project
• Pay as much attention to the users’ subjective
experience as we can, within constraints
• I offer my motto:
Any improvement
is good news.

20. And finally, some wider issues
• Service design
– Cross-channel design
– Channel shifting
• Applying design to policymaking
• UX designers and e-democracy

21. Thank you!
Elizabeth Buie
Luminanze Consulting
www.luminanze.com
ebuie@luminanze.com
@ebuie
Order book from Amazon at http://is.gd/uxgov