Research on the Usability Test of Interface Design in e-Government – Focused on Qingdao e-Government Website

Abstract

Background The government website is an important information release platform for e-government in smart cities, where massive open data intersects with many aspects of people's lives. According to the report "China Open Data Index 2021", the open data of Qingdao represents the highest level of openness of data on government websites in mainland China. Thus the Qingdao government website selected for this usability test provides a glimpse of the overall level of Chinese e-government websites. In this study, "Qingdao Government Open Data Network" was selected as the subject of an experiment on the usability test of government websites. A scientific usability assessment of government websites from the perspective of users can enable users to access data resources effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily. Methods This paper uses the criteria format (CIF) to test the usability of participants' actual task performance. The experiment involved the following process: the test task was first properly defined, then the participants' performance in the process of task experience observed and tested. And finally the relevant criteria of website usability analyzed which based on the test results. Results The test results revealed that the usability criteria (effectiveness, efficiency, etc.) of the "Qingdao Government Open Data Network" were low and the participants were not very satisfied. This is in accordance with certain metrics of the Qingdao e-government website, namely effectiveness (independent completion frequency, auxiliary frequency, error frequency, error times, help times, standard deviation, etc.) and efficiency (completion time, the completion rate/completion time). In terms of satisfaction (measured with a Likert 7-point scale questionnaire), participants were satisfied with the visual design, navigation menu and content layout of the website, but the overall average score was 54, and the levels of satisfaction were still low. Conclusions To some extent, this shows that the usability index of government websites is directly proportional to the satisfaction of users. Based on the analysis of specific tasks, it was found that the compatibility of the accessing user, the keyword search method (fuzzy search), the information retrieval, the visualization function, the length and location of the task path and the layout of the information on the web page all influenced the participants' task performance. Through this study, the need to improve the interface of the Qingdao government website was confirmed, and the user's information and service efficiency should be improved.