Gerry McGovern’s Driving License
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008Way back in 2004, Gerry McGovern, the guy who wrote Killer Web Content, tried to renew his driver’s license online. Here’s a list of some of the issues he ran into at the time:
- Conflicting information;
- Too much information;
- Too little information;
- Unnecessary information;
- Poorly scanned documents;
- Confusing terminology;
- Unavailable websites;
- Too many mouse clicks; and
- A “simple” 10-page online form.
Do any of these sound familiar? They’re mostly fundamental usability errors due to the website managers
“…thinking that something is better than nothing. Many managers see a website as a project. They measure success based on things done. The website has an online application form, it has a search engine, and it has content. The form and search engine may not work well, the content may be badly written, but that’s not what’s important. What is important is that the project is completed.
No manager sets out to design a bad website. The problem is that too many managers view content as a commodity instead of the critical asset that it is.”
E-Government: No website is better than a bad one 18 October 2004
Gerry went online to renew his driving license, found the correct form (which he downloaded but found to be a bad scan of a hard copy) and was told to call his local authority (which is actually called a council) to see if they accept forms downloaded from the web, found his council’s website (which was down), called another council that might also work in his case and was told that this council handled the driving licenses for the one whose website was down. Then he saw a link to a simple online form which happened to be a 10-page version of the one page badly scanned hard copy he’d downloaded before, and then on page 9 of that form, he discovered that it wasn’t an online application at all, but was going to print out the one page form he’d downloaded earlier. This is due to the fact the the driving license application requires a physical signature, a couple of photographs, a medical report and some other stuff to be mailed in to the local office.
If it was frustrating to read that, imagine how much easier it would have been to have found the following information on the first page of your search:
To renew your driving license, please ring your local county council office. A contact list follows.
E-Government: No website is better than a bad one 18 October 2004
While Gerry talks about this case-study in terms of the failure of the content, it’s actually a failure of the entire process that any eGovernment site or application should go through. There’s no indication time or care was spent in planning, implementing or testing any part of the process of renewing a driving license. In the private-sector such poorly executed projects would destroy the reputation of any business that provided them, but there is little impetus to strive for excellent usability, thorough planning and implementation in a government design shop. The jobs are safe, the money is guaranteed and there is usually such a high workload that the time simply isn’t there to give each site or application the care it deserves.
EGovernment services (such as driving license renewal) can be improved simply by sitting down with the developers and designers before the project starts and having a discussion about all the ways that the website or application can be simplified for the user. Getting everyone together and starting the conversation might seem a bit like cat herding, but it is sure to save time, money and end-user frustration in the long run.
Articles referenced in this post:
