A Process Oriented User Test on Public e-Services : The Swedish Municipality Case

• This paper elaborates on the potential to design and conduct process-oriented user tests on public e-Services. The purpose is to use key constructs of business process orientation (BPO) to develop a basis for design and communicating the value of user tests in a public e-Service context. Our hypotheses are that user tests can provide valuable results for all actors involved in e-Service development, not only in terms of how to conduct user tests per se, but also to provide incentives for a customer driven focus and highlighting the value derived from user tests. In the municipality case, actors and stakeholders are involved municipalities in an inter-organisational collaboration on e-Service development, i.e. different municipalities, locally and regionally, as well as the supplier.  Citizens partaking in a university course conduct the user tests with the eye tracking technology. In total 71 users performed in test sessions on 11 different e-Services in a standard platform provided by one supplier. In this paper, we elaborate on a BPO test design based on basic constructs in the approach compared with findings from reconstructing the test process design used with an implicit approach 2012 and an explicit BPO approach in 2013. Contributions include a generic test-process design for data collection, analysis and delivery to stakeholders in an overall e-Service development. Furthermore, findings from our test sessions and test process design will inspire and guide other universities to collaborate with practitioners. Beside the strength with a real case for the students, user test sessions in collaboration can be an eye-opener to not only for municipalities but also suppliers. Thus, the potential for impacts from test results to be applied in the further development of e-Services has thereby increased.  

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

Keyword

e-Service evaluation

process orientation

test process design

user tests

eye tracking

Information Systems

Informatik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)