Here are some highlights, adapted and slightly modified from the book’s introduction:

Bookstores abound with offerings on “usability” and “user experience” (2,352 and 293 search results, respectively, on Amazon.com as of this writing). The number doubles for “government contracting” (4,275 results) and jumps by almost 50 times for “government systems” (106,957 — again, as of this writing). This book, however, is unique. A search on “usability and government” does find 89 titles — books on e-government that mention usability as a success factor; government publications that offer usability information related to a single domain, such as web design or aviation cockpit displays; conference proceedings that include academic research papers on usability in e-government. But not one of these titles covers the topic broadly or focuses on it exclusively.

Yet countless citizens worldwide use government web sites and other systems to obtain information from their government and to do business with it. Tremendous numbers of government employees conduct their nation’s business via desktop computer and intranet sites. It is impossible to say exactly how many people will use a government system themselves during their lifetimes, but it is a safe bet that these systems will touch everyone’s life in some way.

But how usable are these systems? How consistent and predictable are the web sites for those who have to navigate the maze of government information and online services? How well do internal applications support the productivity of  government employees? Functionality apart, how well do government systems actually serve the citizenry?

The United States Government is the largest consumer of information technology in the world. In the summer of 2011 the White House reported that the government had a shocking number — more than 24, 000 — of different web sites. President Obama announced the Campaign to Cut Waste, whose charter includes finding ways of presenting the public with Web-based information and services that are better connected and more consistently presented.

Other governments have had similar concerns. In March of 2004 the United Kingdom launched DirectGov to consolidate access to much of its national government information for citizens, and in January of 2007 it announced a decision to eliminate almost 60% of the 951 sites it had at the time. As of this writing, the United Nations has issued two reports on e-government, and the Association for Computing Machinery has held several annual conferences on e-government, in whose 2011 conference Dianne and I participated (along with our colleague Scott Robertson, who wrote the foreword to the book).

Almost every national government in the world has at least one public web site, and we would be surprised to learn of a government that didn’t have computers, at least in its national offices.

And yet no book exists that addresses usability in government systems. Until now.

This is the first book that concentrates on the role of usability in government systems. It covers designing government systems to provide effectiveness, efficiency, and a pleasant and satisfying experience to the people who use them, whether they are interacting with their government from the outside or working for the government on the inside.

The book’s 24 chapters, each written by one or more experts in the topic, cover topics as varied as open government, plain language, accessibility, biometrics, service design, internal vs. public-facing systems, and cross-cultural issues, as well as integrating usability and user-centered design activities into the government procurement process. It speaks to three audiences:

• government and contractor professionals responsible for government system projects, who know they need to improve usability and want information on how to make that happen
• usability and UX professionals looking to work in government systems and needing information about the constraints of that environment
• policymakers and legislators who are in a position to influence government procurement processes to make it easier to achieve usability

The book takes an international perspective and includes many case studies from government systems around the world.

Usability in Government Systems: User Experience Design for Citizens and Public Servants can help increase government cost effectiveness, operational efficiency, and public engagement. It will be published by Morgan Kaufmann Press in May of 2012. It can be preordered from Amazon here. (I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d use this link, as the royalties are not high and this gives me a small commission as well.)

Update: The book is now shipping, and it’s available on Kindle.

Alphabetical order is NOT a logical order. It may be the best order for a group of choices — i.e., it may be logical to use alphabetical order — but that does not make the order itself a “logical” order. It is only a predictable way of ordering a set that has no intrinsic logical order.

Don’t get me wrong; predictable is good. And sometimes — e.g., in the situations mentioned above — alphabetical order is the most predictable order.

But sometimes it is not, and yesterday I ran across a perfect example. Consider the figure at right. This is a list of car sizes in the preferences area of a travel application. Does the list look logical to you? I can never remember whether “economy” is smaller than “compact” or vice versa; and what in the world is “special”? I submit that size is the logical order for a choice of sizes (duh!).

Similarly, sequence is the logical order for a choice of months or days of the week. (Would you suggest putting April first? I didn’t think so.)

The objective is to choose an order that helps people find the option they seek and (if they aren’t sure) to help them identify the right option. Ordering the car size list by size would do both.

Are you listening, Carlson Wagonlit?

usability testing

So I was testing a web site that allowed users to make travel reservations. In exploring the site to tease out major issues, I noticed that it didn’t handle cities very well by name; it seemed much more comfortable with airport codes. So I chose to have participants make a reservation to Lincoln, Nebraska, figuring that they might guess LIN as the airport code — and end up in Milan, Italy. (Lincoln’s code is LNK; LIN stands for Milan’s Linate Airport.)

Most of the participants in the test had at least some trouble with booking a trip to Lincoln, and more than one actually did wind up with a reservation to Milan. When one of these people realized what had happened, she howled with glee, then turned to me and demanded, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You knew that would happen!” (At this point I was free to laugh too, and I had to admit that I had.)

That’s my funniest moment in usability testing. What’s yours?

The Web is full of thoughts on elevator buttons. A Google search on the phrase “elevator buttons” returns “about 49,000″ hits. Although some are photos, many are thoughts or conversations on how to improve the design.

I have a specific concern, and an idea for addressing it. Others have expressed my concern, but I have never seen my idea described anywhere. Pardon me while I ramble a little…

Unless you are a total stranger to elevators (hard to imagine, since you’re reading a blog), you’ve doubtless had the experience of being in an elevator whose doors were about to close, and hearing someone in the hallway shout, “Hold the elevator!”

You fumble at the panel. Which one is the dadblasted “door open” button?! By the time you’ve figured it out, the doors have closed. (I’ve taken to waving my arm between the doors to trip the electric eye. I did it with my leg on the Orlando Airport shuttle-train once, and impressed an elderly couple who were clearly more intimidated by technology than I am. )

I’ve found a few sites that mention the problem. I have yet to find one that has the solution I favor. Let me mention a few ideas, and then I’ll get to my own.

A guy named Dave has a “million-dollar idea ” to approach this problem — he revises the pictures on the door-open and door-close buttons.

John Bartholdi, of Georgia Tech, has a page on elevator button panels . He discusses many of the good and bad features of these panels, but he doesn’t mention my perfect idea.

Geof Huth blogs about the pictures on the open and close buttons and raises a very valid issue: Do they indicate the movement of the doors or the current state? “The problem I perceive,” he writes, “is that the ‘close door’ symbol looks open to me.” (It does to me too.) Several people have commented on Geof’s post, but no one has mentioned my very simple idea.

You get the picture.

So what would solve the problem and help you hold that elevator for your colleague or fellow traveler? Simple — make the “door open” button larger than the others! That way you wouldn’t have to peer closely at the open and close buttons to identify which was which; you wouldn’t have to decipher the symbols; you wouldn’t have to think much at all. You’d just push and hold the button that grabbed your attention.

So I’ve taken to promoting this idea every time I have to hold the elevator for someone. Everyone agrees that it’s a good idea. (Or maybe they’re just being nice. Who can tell in an elevator?) I wonder how long it’ll take before it catches on. (Maybe I should write ISO… hahaha.)

I did once encounter a guy who told me of the time he needed a quick-find door close button. He was riding up to his office, minding his own business, when two cops entered the elevator behind him, guns drawn, and jumped off at the third floor. He had never before, he told me, wanted so badly to see those doors close ASAP!

I submit, however, that the cops should have thrown him out of the elevator before going in search of their crook.

Anyhow, here are a couple of drawings I dashed off in PowerPoint. Nothing fancy, and the arrangement may not be perfect. Perhaps the “door open” button doesn’t need to be as much larger as I’ve shown it. But I think you can see how it makes the critical button easy to find and press in a hurry.

Elevator buttons as they’re usually seen

Elevator buttons with a large “door open” button

Larry King has recently posted a picture of a larger door-open button . It doesn’t satisfy me completely, but it’s a start.