Using Freedom of Information Requests to Understand Usability Problems with e-government Websites

This paper investigates usability problems found in 14 UK council websites as described by citizens. Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were used to collect messages about citizens’ interaction with these websites. Content analysis was used to categorise 713 usability problems found in 620 messages. 49 distinct problem categories grouped in 9 major categories were identified. Problems related to Content completeness (40.8%) and Interactive Functionalities (36.04%) were the most frequently reported. The implications of these findings for research and design of e-government websites, as well as the advantages and limitations of using FOI requests in usability research, are discussed.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Leonardo Sandoval-Guzman

Helen Petrie

Conference

Publication date: July 2017

Publication date (Print): July 2017

Pages: 1-4

Affiliations

[0001]Department of Computer Science

University of York, York, UK

[0002]Department of Computer Science

University of York, York, YO105GH, UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.14

SO-VID: 007951d9-2827-4966-bd66-2603ced95d1d

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 31st International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference (HCI 2017)

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 31

Conference location: Sunderland, UK

Conference date: 3 - 6 July 2017

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: digital make-believe, with delegates considering our expansive

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.14

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

references

Great Britain 2000 Freedom of Information Act 2000 London Office of Public Sector Information
Office for National Statistics 2015 UK Electoral Statistics 2015 Available at https://goo.gl/2kjjvs
H. PetrieC. Power 2012 What do users really care about?: a comparison of usability problems found by users and experts on highly interactive websites Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems ACM
SOCITM 2016 Better Connected 2015-16 survey Available at https://betterconnected.socitm.net
Scottish Parliament 2002 Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 Available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2002/13
K. WalbyA. Luscombe 2016 Criteria for quality in qualitative research and use of freedom of information requests in the social sciences Qualitative Research doi:10.1177/1468794116679726

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Great Britain 2000 Freedom of Information Act 2000 London Office of Public Sector Information

[2] Office for National Statistics 2015 UK Electoral Statistics 2015 Available at https://goo.gl/2kjjvs

[3] H. PetrieC. Power 2012 What do users really care about?: a comparison of usability problems found by users and experts on highly interactive websites Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems ACM

[4] SOCITM 2016 Better Connected 2015-16 survey Available at https://betterconnected.socitm.net

[5] Scottish Parliament 2002 Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 Available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2002/13

[6] K. WalbyA. Luscombe 2016 Criteria for quality in qualitative research and use of freedom of information requests in the social sciences Qualitative Research doi:10.1177/1468794116679726

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