Analysis of Responsiveness and Usability in Websites Serving Public Transparency in a Mobile Environment: Case Study in the State of Paraíba Through Heuristic Evaluation

Abstract

Technology is an important item nowadays, especially with regard to the popularization of the internet, but it still has restrictions, such as access mechanism, bandwidth speed and other limiting factors. Taking into account the need for continuous evolution of technology, especially to ensure effectiveness of citizen participation, with a satisfactory public transparency, allowing the majority of the population to have access to government information. Given this, this study aimed to verify, in a selection of electronic sites of public transparency in the State of Paraíba, the adequacy of accessibility from the perspect of visits through mobile devices (smartphones). The deductive method was used through the evaluation of mobile device interfaces using the heuristic evaluation strategy. Currently, this gadget is becoming the most common tool for access to information within popular reach. For this study, a usability was tested during visits to the websites, in order to evaluate the compatibility with responsiveness. Results were then assigned to a scale of compatibility, divided into “compatible”, “partially compatible” and “incompatible”. The results showed that most of the websites have responsiveness, but in more than half of the evaluations there was room for improvement. It is concluded that the lack of this compatibility has hindered the popularization of access, especially by limiting the population that has restrictions on access mechanisms, using solely mobile devices.