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Yes, government services was what I thought of when I wrote "most websites". Then again, I feel like those tend to be the worst user experience offenders (which
by atomwaffel 10y ago
Yes, government services was what I thought of when I wrote "most websites". Then again, I feel like those tend to be the worst user experience offenders (which is what this comes down to). It took me several attempts to mangle my home address into something the US visa application form would accept and I've seen ö turned into ö on my own country's official websites so many times that I can remember the mojibake.
I wonder why that is. I guess part of the reason is that government doesn't need to invest heavily in UX because there is no threat of people going elsewhere – when you need a passport, you need a passport, and you're not going to order one from Amazon. In fact, there's probably a disincentive for government to continuously improve their UX precisely because any changes to a system that's in place and working well enough only cost them money.
Are there any counterexamples of government websites that offer good user experience?
- bzbarsky 10y agoThe tax e-filing system in Massachusetts is a government website that offers a quite good user experience. It could be a bit better (e.g. it could save your general W-2 info from year to year on the assumption that you probably didn't change employers), but it's fairly nice in most ways; the W-2 thing is the only problem I've run into with it, and it has a fairly clear UI. Especially given the complexity of the actual paper MA tax forms. On the other hand, the MA website where you pay things like unemployment insurance for your employees is terrible, complete with being offline outside of normal business hours (because afaict they take it offline while they do batch imports from physical media that companies send them). Note that this is not as much of a "voter-facing" website, of course. ;)