Caroline's Corner: Useful, Usable and Used – your new look Council Website

Question: where do you go to find 225 local government officials, all talking about usability?

Answer: the recent Headstar/Socitm event Building the perfect council web site.

SO WHAT’S HEADSTAR/SOCITM? Headstar is a pioneering e-publisher. If you’re into e-government then think about signing up for their free weekly newsletter – and they also recently started a similar one for accessibility.

Socitm is the Society of Information Technology Management. But it’s really the professional association for senior people working in ICT in local government. For many years now they have published the "Better Connected" review. This looks at every UK local government website and assesses them against each other and against a set of independent criteria. It’s tough to be at the top of their list, and each year they make it harder to get their best ratings.

For example, if your local government website merely threw out a bunch of brochure-ware, then Better Connected would award the lowest rating: “Promotional”.

To earn the next rating, “Content”, you have to provide useful stuff. And to get to “Content+”, you have to organise it in a way people can find it.

The highest accolade, “Transactional”, means that you can actually do things – and find content where you need it.

THE PATCHWORK WEBSITE The Better Connected rating system was introduced in 1999, when only a few councils even had websites. Now, they all do. As one reviewer put it last year: 'The standard of [local government] websites certainly keeps improving overall year by year. The average site now contains features such as online payment... that were confined to .. a few brave pioneers just a few years ago. However, a new phenomenon has appeared: the patchwork site, which is great in some areas but dire in others... How do you rate a site like this?'

USEFUL, USABLE AND USED So Better Connected has changed its rating system. Henceforth, they will be checking to see if a site is ‘useful, usable and used’.

Useful content: Does the website have the information that people are looking for?

Usability: How easy is it to find and use the information on the website?

Usage: How well used is the website?

Isn’t that great? It’s no longer enough to merely have content – it’s got to be good content. And people must be able to use it. And they must actually use it. Hooray!

BACK TO THE EVENT So our 225 people gathered together to find out how to make their web sites useful, usable and used.

Gee-Kay Wong started us off with an engaging presentation that set the scene and introduced us to the idea that usability means user-centred design aimed at building great user experiences.

Martin Greenwood of Socitm explained the changes to the rating system (much scribbling of notes in the audience).

Then Morgan McKeagney compared a selection of UK and Irish websites – encouraging us all by telling us that on the whole, the UK ones came out ahead.

A lively panel discussion finished off the morning, as attendees challenged the presenters with a series of practical questions.

In the afternoon, Stefan Hasselwimmer of the Usability Exchange gave us the results of a review of the top council websites – by disabled users. Their innovative service has a panel of people with disabilities who will try tasks on your website, and give you an immediate rating. It’s cheering to see a change from the sometimes mechanical idea of accessibility as conformance to a set of guidelines and towards the idea that accessibility is about people doing things. It was less cheering to find out that the panel couldn’t do two simple tasks on some of the top 20 council websites – or took an excessively long time.

Gee-Kay asked the question we all wanted the answer for: 'How much does it cost to get Usability Exchange to review my site?' And the answer is: not much. Visit http://www.usabilityexchange.com/ to find out.

We then broke into groups: search, writing for the web, accessibility and (yes, dear readers, my chance to speak) forms. I was impressed that about 30 people stormed up several flights of stairs to compare ideas on forms. The top two concerns were: how best to build electronic and web forms into good business processes, and how to choose and integrate the technologies. Sheenagh Reynolds of Better Connected and Steve Palmer of Hillingdon Council provided their practical insights, including a rousing mini-speech from Steve on the importance of understanding users: 'You’ve got to think about the real people. What if the person filling in your form has only got a couple of minutes in the library to tell you about being beaten up by her partner? It’s got to be really easy.'

And finally, we returned to the hall to hear about three Better Connected reviewers’ choice of their favourite web sites: the “Wow” factor.

“WOW” EQUALS USABLE And it turns out that the ‘wow’ factor for a council website is really about thoughtful usability – providing things that people can use, yes, but also that they want to use. For example, Helen Williams picked Clackmannanshire Council. Have a look, and you’ll probably think 'Wow? What wow?'. It’s not the loveliest web site you’ve seen, and it’s short on fancy features. But that’s not its purpose. What it does, it does very well: provides easy access to the information and services that are relevant to the citizenry of Clackmannanshire.

So, are you working on a patchwork site? Perhaps ‘wow’ equals usable for you, too.

REFERENCE Most of the presentations from the day are available at: http://www.headstar-events.com/council/programme.php

If you have any comments or suggestions about this article then please contact Caroline at:

Caroline.Jarrett@Effortmark.co.uk

Caroline Jarrett is a usability consultant specialising in forms, questionnaires and data capture.

Associated Link: Effortmark

All change at the top for System Concepts
Source: System Concepts Ltd, 3 July 2009
 
Leslie Fountain has been promoted to joint Managing Director of leading usability consultancy System Concepts.

Life in UCD immortalised in fiction: you couldn't make it up
Source: UN, 2 July 2009
 
Sarah Herman's fictitious book on life in a user-centred design company has hit the shelves and The Guardian's book pages...

Interfaces Magazine - Issue 79: The Education Issue
Source: Interaction Group, 1 July 2009
 
The latest issue of Interfaces is now available as a free download from the Interaction Website.

Two new Behavioural research Tools from Noldus
Source: UN, 30 June 2009
 
Tool updates make on-site behavioural data collection easier.

Cell Phones that Listen and Learn
Source: MIT Technology Review, 29 June 2009
 
New software tracks a user's behavior by monitoring everyday sounds.

Top Six Don’ts for Usability Testing
Source: FutureNow Inc., 27 June 2009
 
Six tips for creating quality usability tests to ensure useful feedback from testers.

Usability: ‘Lovely software. But I can’t work it’
Source: FT.com, 26 June 2009
 
In a recent survey by Global Graphics, 77 per cent of office workers estimate they lose up to one hour a week because business software is difficult to use.

And what do you do?
Source: Dexo Design, 25 June 2009
 
How do you describe your job role? Here are the results of a recent 'Preferred UX/UI Title' Poll.

Most Doctors cite Usability as critical to Electronic Health Record Adoption
Source: TMCNet, 24 June 2009
 
It's all about 'meaningful use'.

Glossy monitors look good but can hurt
Source: QUT, 23 June 2009
 
A new advisory cites research which suggests high gloss monitors make users sit awkwardly.