Case 3: Digital Agency Website
The "Digital Agency Website" is an official website that was established in conjunction with the establishment of Digital Agency in September 2021. The purpose of the website is to accurately and carefully deliver necessary information to users in Japan and overseas. As a government website, the website implements advanced initiatives such as introducing a design system as a mechanism to consistently provide information to the public with the highest priority placed on web accessibility. In addition, the content management system is being developed based on open source so that it can be deployed in each ministry and agency, and continuous improvements are being made while collecting opinions from users.
Contents
- [Problem 1] It was difficult to find the information I wanted to know from the top page.
- [Problem 2] The content was not structured in an easy-to-understand manner.
- Interview
- Related Pages
[Problem 1] It was difficult to find the information I wanted to know from the top page.
As a result of checking the statistics of the Digital Agency website before the renewal, it was found that many users directly reached the target page from the search engines.
The main reasons were that the information on the top page was displayed in chronological order, and that important measures were fixed at the top of the page, and the guidance for users to find the information they wanted was not fully functional [Figure 1].
As operations continued, it became clear that the growing volume of content was becoming increasingly inconsistent, and that information was becoming scattered, leading to an overall redesign.
Solution point 1 Classify users into three groups to optimize the flow of information provision
The website users were classified into three groups: "general users," "administrative and business users," and "media users." The results of a survey of each group of users revealed differences in their interests and content.
Based on this research, we first improved the menu structure by adding user-specific items and organizing links to content by user menu [Figure 2]. In order to confirm the appropriateness of the display in the user menu, we started by modifying the menu, confirmed the statistics, and verified the effects. The results obtained were then applied to the overall structure at the time of the renewal.
Solution point 2: Establish rules to make it easier to find the latest information
Before the renewal, the top page had a vertical stack of announcements. However, when information was stacked, the page grew vertically long, and users had to scroll to find the information they wanted, which made it impossible to find the information they wanted.
For this reason, we established a rule at the top of the top page that, in principle, a total of five content items are posted in chronological order, with two items of high importance, such as those related to policies and measures, listed in large horizontal rows and three items listed in small horizontal rows below them (Figure 3).
* 1 Important Notice
- Notification of Incident, etc., with High Urgency / Severity
- Maximum of 2
* 2 Topics
- Top Priority Notifications
- Number of cases: In principle, 5 cases * 2-4 cases can be handled
* 3 New arrival and update
- Daily new and updated information
- Number of incidents: 5
[Problem 2] The content was not structured in an easy-to-understand manner.
There were also various issues regarding the composition of the content to be transmitted.
Specifically, sentences written in accordance with administrative rules and customs tend to be difficult for users to understand, and it was unclear whether necessary information was being delivered to users.
In addition, even if general opinions and requests were collected, there were many contents on the whole policy and the whole Digital Agency, and it was not clear whether the contents were being conveyed to users, so improvements were made from various angles.
Point 1: Creating an easy-to-understand information dissemination system by government officials itself
In the field of administration, there is a custom of using technical terms and expressions peculiar to administration and describing all the detailed information in the same way as in daily business when transmitting content, so it tended to be difficult for users to understand.
In order to solve these problems, in Digital Agency, the staff in charge of operating the website content checks each content from the viewpoint of users who are not familiar with policies and laws. The checked content is shared with the staff in charge of the content, and the flow of completing the manuscript is created through multiple exchanges.
In addition, from the viewpoint of information design, we have established check items on how to write content, such as "whether the heading and text correspond well, and whether the subject and predicate correspond well," and "whether a sentence is not too long." In addition, from the viewpoint of accessibility, we have established check items and rules such as "make sure to attach alternative text to images" and "when posting PDFs, prepare HTML-versions that are highly readable by screen readers as much as possible." By setting and sharing these standards, government officials itself has created a system that can transmit information that can be transmitted to users.
Solution Point 2 Creating a system that incorporates user feedback and utilizes it for improvement
In order to provide accurate information, it is essential to understand what kind of impressions and opinions users actually have about the content. Therefore, we have implemented a posting function (hereinafter referred to as the "Feedback Form") to collect users' voices on the content page.
In this feedback form, we took care to reduce the burden of answering in order to gather more voices. With advice from user research experts in the Digital Agency, we installed a "Yes / No" button to quickly confirm whether users found the information they were looking for [Figure 4].
In addition, when "Yes" is selected, the reason can be answered in a free-text format, and when "No" is selected, the reason can be selected from the options and a supplementary explanation can be entered, so that users can easily answer and collect necessary information.
On the other hand, the number of PVs (the number of pages viewed by users) and other information on the status of website access is shared with Digital Agency on a weekly basis. By combining these results with the opinions collected from the feedback form, it has become possible to get a bird' s-eye view of the specific content that users want to know and the actual behavior on the website, which would normally be known only through face-to-face interviews.
Among the pages with many negative comments, we gave priority to those with many views and reviewed the content. By organizing the headlines and describing the information users needed, the percentage of "No" was high at the beginning for one page, but after improvement, the percentage of "Yes" increased. In addition, we made improvements such as effectively expressing information that would be difficult to understand if read in words with images.
