IAC 2020
In 2012, President Barack Obama introduced his Digital Government Strategy (DGS) attempting to create citizen-centric Federal Government websites and requiring that they include Voice Of the Citizen/Consumer (VOC) feedback mechanisms.
This gave rise to a new breed of US Government websites and helped usher in an era of digital citizen engagement, including the development of a Federal Government-centric approach to usability testing activities.
This presentation provides a brief overview of the DGS and examines some of the issues affecting its implementation, especially the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), with its limits on government data collection and concerns related to the collection of citizen Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
It then revisits a 2013 case study presented at (IA Summit and UXPA) on large scale card sorts and tree tests as mechanisms for improving one federal agency website’s information architectures by leveraging VOC citizen engagement and large-scale unmoderated card sorts, including intentional oversampling and (then) novel recruitment approaches.
The presentation then updates the 2013 case study with a new 2019/2020 case study for a different federal agency, considering how the original approach has evolved and formalized.
Key takeaways from the session:
Attendees will learn about the DGS, VOC approaches, and learnings from large-scale online card sorts and tree tests performed on behalf of Federal Government Websites. They will learn about card sort and tree test minimum/optimum sampling as well as a DGS-specific justification for deliberate oversampling. They will also learn how large-scale card sorts, tree tests, and similar online usability testing activities, can inform and improve formal, moderated usability testing activities.