A Process Oriented User Test On Public E-Services - The Swedish Municipality Case

This paper elaborates on the potential to design and conduct process-oriented user tests on public e-Services. The idea is to use key constructs of business process orientation (BPO) to develop a basis for designing and communicating the value of user tests in a public e-Service context. Our hypothesis is that user tests can provide valuable results for all actors involved in e-Service development, not only in terms of how to conduct user tests per se, but also to provide incentives for a customer driven focus and highlighting the value derived from user tests. In the municipality case, actors and stakeholders are municipalities involved in an inter-organisational collaboration on e-Service development, i.e. different municipalities, locally and regionally, as well as the supplier. Citizens partaking in a university course conduct the user tests with eye tracking technology. In total 71 users performed in test sessions on 11 different e-Services in a standard platform provided by one supplier. In this paper, we elaborate on a BPO test design based on basic constructs of the approach compared with findings from the reconstruction of the test process design used with an implicit approach 2012 and an explicit BPO approach in 2013. Contributions include a generic test-process design for data collection, analysis and delivery to stakeholders in an overall e-Service development. Furthermore, findings from our test sessions and test process design can inspire and guide other universities to collaborate with practitioners. In addition to the strength of a real case for the students, user test sessions in collaboration can be an eye-opener not only for municipalities but also suppliers. Thus, the likelihood that test results will be applied in the further development of e-Services has increased.