Analyzing Turkish E-government Websites by Eye Tracking

Abstract

Abstract-Usability studies provide essential information about users' views and perceptions of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of given online services. Nowadays, e-government web sites become popular. Therefore, there is a need for usability testing to specify the usability problems and to make the services of the e-government more usable. The purpose of this study is to investigate usability of some Turkish e-government services. The study examined usability of five Turkish e-government web sites: Ministry of National Education -Student Information System (eokul), Ministry of Justice -National Judicial Network Project (UYAP), Turkish National Police: Vehicle Search System, Social Security Institute: Service Details and General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre. It was conducted with nine participants. This study is a case study with mixed design methodology, in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed and combined. Quantitative data were collected through an eye-tracker, a pre-test questionnaire of participants' demographics and previous utilization of egovernment web sites and a post-test questionnaire. Qualitative data were collected through both semi-structured individual interviews and observation during test. The study results identify the usability problems encountered while using government services. The study concludes with specific recommendations for improvement of e-government services in Turkey.

Integrated Approach to e-Commerce Websites Evaluation with the Use of Surveys and Eye Tracking Based Experiments

“…These works have, contrarily to the ones from the first group, a broad domain scope and include the assessment of usability in the e-commerce [27], online banking [28], e-government [29] or online booking systems [30].…”

Effective use of human physiological metrics to evaluate website usability

“…As for satisfaction dimension in website usability evaluation, hypotheses H1a , H2a and H4a were not significant, which may result from many reasons that can affect satisfaction (Albayrak and Cagiltay, 2013; Doherty et al , 2010; Kotval and Goldberg, 1998). For example, the aesthetics or interestingness might attract users to spend more time on surfing and increase the mental load that causes a high HRV, while users satisfy with the website design.…”

“…How to evaluate the usability of a product is also significant in product designing. Presently, research on usability evaluation methods for websites are mostly examining users’ subjective assessments, or considering error rate, completion time and other performance indicators as objective measures to assess from objective view (Muylle et al , 2004; Jeng, 2005; Albayrak and Cagiltay, 2013). These assessment methods are limited, and have a lack of theoretical basis and technical support.…”

“…For example, www.58.com has better website usability. As a result, it takes less time for users to find information with less fixation time and fixation count (Albayrak and Cagiltay, 2013; Goldberg and Kotval, 1998; Kotval and Goldberg, 1998). Vice versa, www.edeng.cn has worse website usability.…”

“…Usability studies provide essential information about users’ views and perceptions of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of given online services. Therefore, there is a need for usability testing to specify the usability problems and to make the online services more usable (Albayrak and Cagiltay, 2013).…”