How UX research can help in digital public service design

As the design and delivery of public services have significantly evolved, UX research started playing a much more prominent role in their development. A better understanding of user behaviour, needs, and challenges enables the creation of solutions that are more accessible, user-friendly and efficient. Employing various UX research methods, such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing, leads to a user-centric design that meets the needs of the diverse population that public platforms serve.

Challenges in public service design

Designing public platforms imposes significant challenges. Handling them correctly has a major impact on the popularity of government websites among citizens. Even within the European Union, e-government platform usage varies widely, with countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Finland having adoption rates of over 90%, while Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria fall below 50%. And that’s the data from the Digital Economy and Society Index 2022, which comes from the period when public platforms gained traction due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Common issues faced in the public platform design include:

• Diverse user groups: public platforms must be designed to serve a broad audience. Regardless of a user’s background, digital literacy, disabilities, or cultural heritage, government websites should be accessible to everyone. Inclusivity is paramount—providing culturally sensitive content and ensuring compatibility with screen readers and text-to-speech functions became a much-needed standard.
• Complex regulatory requirements: it's no surprise that public platforms must comply with various regulatory requirements, which are both complex and dynamic. As these regulations increasingly favour data privacy and security, they require robust data management systems with built-in functions that allow for obtaining user consent, data encryption, and secure data storage and transmission. As the regulations are continually evolving, the require public platforms to remain responsive and adaptable.
• Limited resources: unfortunately, designing and maintaining public platforms often involves operating within tight time and budget constraints. Efficient resource management is essential to deliver user-centric, well-adopted e-government services. It involves prioritising features that provide the most significant impact, with core components being developed first and additional options added as resources allow.
• Legacy systems: integrating new public platforms with existing legacy systems remains a common challenge. Dealing with outdated technology and architecture is constantly difficult, constituting a major obstacle to delivering a well-functioning government website. Ensuring compatibility requires thorough analysis, mapping, and planning, and the data migration must be handled with care to avoid data loss and ensure its integrity.

Benefits of UX research

Luckily, UX research offers a multitude of benefits that address the aforementioned challenges, all of which aim to create citizen-centric online interactions.

Enhanced user satisfaction

UX research enables the design of tailored solutions that improve the usability of public services. By understanding the specific preferences and needs of various citizen groups, designers can create interfaces that are easy to navigate. This intuitiveness leads to higher user satisfaction when public platforms become more responsive. For instance, incorporating feedback from usability testing allows us to make more informed adjustments to user flows, which results in enhancing the overall experience. The goal is to make citizens more likely to engage with and benefit from public services, leading to increased trust.

Increased efficiency

User-centred design principles don’t focus solely on improving the frontend experience but also streamlining the backend process. UX research identifies inefficiencies and areas for improvement, leading to reduced bottlenecks and cuts in administrative costs. This focus on user journey and efficient delivery reduces the need for manual intervention, saving time and resources for both users and administrators. It’s especially valuable in the public sector, where maintaining cost-effectiveness is often a top priority.

Accessibility

UX research techniques such as accessibility audits play a pivotal role in identifying and addressing any potential barriers, ultimately making public platforms more inclusive. Moreover, compliance with standards like Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) ensures that digital services are accessible to citizens with diverse abilities. Depending on the country, this approach may also fulfil not only ethical but also legal obligations. No matter the official requirements, though, caring for accessibility greatly enhances the reach and impact of public platforms.

Methods of UX research

UX research employs various methods to reveal insights about users, their needs, and their interactions with public platforms. These methods allow researchers to zoom in on different aspects of the user journey. Each of them can be tailored to the specific needs of a project to inform design decisions, validate hypotheses and spark creativity.

Surveys

UX research surveys act like compasses, allowing for a better understanding of user behaviour, preferences, and attitudes. They can be very simple, coming in the form of short questionnaires with one goal: collecting user responses regarding one functionality. However, their strength lies in scalability, both in terms of the survey’s scope and reach. Surveys can be targeted at specific groups or the whole user base, allowing for collecting both quantitative and qualitative data.

To learn even more about surveys, check out our Digital 101 page, which includes a dedicated article on this topic.

Interviews

Interviews provide an invaluable opportunity to explore the user's point of view. These one-on-one conversations enable a deeper probing of contexts, emotions, pain points, desires, motivations and decision-making processes. Interviews can be structured and follow a predefined script, but they also come in the form of free-flowing discussions. The key to an effective interview is active listening; users share their stories, and researchers capture nuances to shape the design.

Usability testing

Observing how users navigate through an online service is a great tool for revealing any usability flaw. Seeing every click, hesitation, and frustration as they emerge in a real-life scenario reflects both the design’s triumphs and stumbles. Data gained through usability testing leads to effective, informed iterations when the design gets tweaked to smoothen the user journey. While most researchers opt to conduct such tests remotely, usability testing can be also performed in person, providing even more insights into the user's feelings and emotions.

Heuristic evaluation

Using the established heuristics, like Nielsen-Molich’s, is a systematic approach to UX research. Evaluators go through the checklist to determine if there are any flaws that got overlooked, especially in the early design phase. Heuristic evaluation is fast and inexpensive, but it doesn’t involve real users. It heavily relies on the knowledge of UX researchers and the assumption of what’s considered "good" usability. This creates a risk of treating them as set-in-stone principles, so it’s best to pair them with the sensibility of real-world scenarios.

Our methodology

Preparing the public platforms report required us to incorporate various UX research methods to carefully examine government websites in 14 countries:

• Australia
• Canada
• Colombia
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Iceland
• New Zealand
• Poland
• Qatar
• Sweden
• The United Arab Emirates
• The United Kingdom

We selected only the publicly open, easily locatable centre hubs for public e-services. The first step was mapping—we precisely focused on the most important screens, processes, and services. This enabled us to visualise the entire user journey in the form of user-flow diagrams.

Then, we began the content audit phase, which consisted of heuristic analysis, expert analysis, and a cognitive walkthrough. Throughout the audit, we identified and categorized issues on a three-point scale, from minor to critical.

The final phase of the e-government platform evaluation involved combining information from all of the previous steps to create a Flying Bisons Scoresheet. With its three main sections, it evaluated the main platform experience, e-government ecosystem experience and government digital strategy.

Additionally, we performed a thorough evaluation of usability, drawing insights from the opinions of nearly 3000 users across various government platforms. Respondents were given a specific task, and we asked them several close-ended questions to evaluate their experience, including the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Download our report now to learn more about our findings and the importance of UX research in public platform design.

Summary

UX research is an essential component in the design and development of digital public services. By prioritising citizens' needs and experiences, it ensures that government websites overcome their unique challenges. The tailored application of UX research methodologies, from surveys to usability testing and heuristic analysis, equips designers with much-needed insights. All to reach the ultimate goal: creating a truly citizen-centric public platform. Enhanced satisfaction, efficiency and accessibility lead to more trust and fewer manual interventions. As citizens’ expectations continue to evolve, integrating UX research into the design process remains crucial for creating websites to serve the public.

Schedule an expert audit to get bespoke advice on how to make your platform truly citizen-centric.